Turkic mythology

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Turkic mythology
Belief system Tengrism Shamanism
Chief gods and goddesses Tengri Kayra Ülgen Erlik Bai Baianai
Epics and heroes Ergenekon Metehan Oghuz Khagan Asena Attila
Major concepts Sheka İye Grey wolf Kut
Category File
v t e

Turkic mythology refers to myths and legends told by the

• Archura, an evil forest demon.
• Qarakorshaq, a hiding animal-like creature that can be scared away by light and noise.^[7]
• Tepegöz, a cyclops-like creature with only one eye on his forehead.^[8]
• Tulpar, a winged horse.
• Yelbeghen, a creature described as a seven-headed giant or dragon. ^[9]

Mythical locations

• Yalbuz (Bald Mountain), a mysterious and legendary mountain.^[10]

Gods in Turkic mythology

İye are guardian spirits responsible for specific natural elements. They often lack personal traits since they are numerous.^[14] Although most entities can be identified as deities or İye, there are other entities such as Genien (Çor) and demons (Abasi).^[14]

Tengri

Kök Tengri is the first of the primordial deities in the religion of the early Turkic people. After the Turks started to migrate and leave Central Asia and encounter monotheistic religions, Tengrism was modified from its pagan/polytheistic origins,^[12] with only two of the original gods remaining: Tengri, representing goodness and Uçmag (a place like heaven), while Erlik represents evil and hell. The words Tengri and Sky were synonyms. Tengri's appearance is unknown. He rules the fates of all people and acts freely, but he is fair as he awards and punishes. The well-being of the people depends on his will. The oldest form of the name is recorded in Chinese annals from the 4th century BC, describing the beliefs of the Xiongnu. It takes the form 撑犁/Cheng-li, which is hypothesized to be a Chinese transcription of Tengri.^[16]

Other deities

Umay (The Turkic root umāy originally meant 'placenta, afterbirth') is the goddess of fertility.^[17] Umay resembles earth-mother goddesses found in various other world religions and is the daughter of Tengri.

Öd Tengri is the god of time and is not well-attested. It is recorded in the Orkhon stones that Öd Tengri is the ruler of time and a son of Kök Tengri.^{[citation needed]}

Boz Tengri, like Öd Tengri, is also not well-attested. He is seen as the god of the grounds and steppes and is a son of Kök Tengri.^{[citation needed]}

Kayra is the Spirit of God. A primordial god of the highest sky, upper air, space, atmosphere, light, life and a son of Kök Tengri.

Ülgen is the son of Kayra and Umay and is the god of goodness. The Aruğ (Arı) denotes "good spirits" in Turkic and Altaic mythology. They are under the control of Ülgen and do good things on earth.^[18]

Mergen is the son of Kayra and the brother of Ülgen. He represents the mind and intelligence. He sits on the seventh floor of the sky, and is considered omniscient.

Kyzaghan is associated with war and depicted as a strong and powerful god. Kyzaghan is the son of Kayra and the brother of Ulgan, and lives on the ninth floor of the sky. He is portrayed as a young man with a helmet and a spear, riding on a red horse.

Erlik is the god of death and the underworld, also known as Tamag.

Alara is a water fairy from Tatar mythology that lives in Lake Baikal. She has the power to heal broken hearts and help people feel love, similar to Cupid.

Ak Ana, the "White Mother", is the primordial creator-goddess of the Turkic peoples. She is also known as the goddess of the water.

Ayaz Ata is a winter god.

Alaz is the god of fire.

Talay or Dalai is the god of the ocean and seas. (See also: Dalai Lama)

Elos is the goddess of chaos and control. She can be found underground, in the sky or on the earth.^{[citation needed]}

Symbols

Horse

As a result of the Turks' nomadic lifestyle, the horse is also one of the main figures of Turkic mythology; Turks considered the horse an extension of the individual, particularly the male horse. This might have been the origin of the title "at-beyi" (horse-lord).^{[citation needed]} As such, horses have been used in various Turkic rituals, including in funeral rites and burial practices. Turkology researcher Marat Kaldybayev has suggested that "the presence of a horse in funeral rites is one of the ethnocultural markers uniting Turkic cultures, starting from the ancient Turkic time and ending in the late Middle Ages."^[19]

Tulpar is a winged or swift horse in Turkic mythology (for example, Kazakh and Tatar mythology), similar to Pegasus. Tulpar is also found on the state emblems of Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Bashkortostan.

Dragon

The

The

Among animals, the deer was considered to be the mediator par excellence between the worlds of gods and men; thus at the funeral ceremony the soul of the deceased was accompanied in his/her journey to the underworld (Tamag) or abode of the ancestors (Uçmag) by the spirit of a deer offered as a funerary sacrifice (or present symbolically in funerary iconography accompanying the physical body) acting as psychopomp.^[22]

In the

In this instance the ancient funerary associations of the deer (literal or physical death) may be seen here to have been given a new (Islamic) slant by their equation with the metaphorical death of fanaa (the Sufi practice of dying-to-self) which leads to spiritual rebirth in the mystic rapture of baqaa.^[24]

Epics

Grey Wolf legend

The wolf symbolizes honor and is also considered the mother of most Turkic peoples. Ashina is the name of one of the ten sons who were given birth to by a mythical wolf in Turkic mythology.^[25][26][27]

The legend tells of a young boy who survived a raid in his village. A she-wolf finds the injured child and nurses him back to health. He subsequently impregnates the wolf which then gives birth to ten half-wolf, half-human boys. One of these, Ashina, becomes their leader and establishes the Ashina clan which ruled the Göktürks (T'u-chueh) and other Turkic nomadic empires.^[28][29][30] The wolf, pregnant with the boy's offspring, escaped her enemies by crossing the Western Sea to a cave near to the Qocho mountains, one of the cities of the Tocharians. The first Turks subsequently migrated to the Altai regions, where they are known as experts in ironworking.^[31]

Ergenekon legend

The Ergenekon legend tells about a great crisis of the ancient Turks. Following a military defeat, the Turks took refuge in the legendary Ergenekon valley where they were trapped for four centuries. They were finally released when a blacksmith created a passage by melting a mountain, allowing the gray wolf to lead them out.^{[32][33][34][35][36][37]} A New Year's ceremony commemorates the legendary ancestral escape from Ergenekon.^[38]

Oghuz legends

The legend of Oghuz Khagan is a central political mythology for Turkic peoples of Central Asia and eventually the Oghuz Turks who ruled in Anatolia and Iran. Versions of this narrative have been found in the histories of Rashid ad-Din Tabib, in an anonymous 14th-century Uyghur vertical script manuscript now in Paris, and in Abu'l Ghazi's Shajara at-Turk and have been translated into Russian and German.^{[citation needed]}

Korkut Ata stories

The

• Alp Er Tunga
• Akbuzat ^{[citation needed]}
• Epic of Manas, detailing, at length, the adventures of the hero Manas

After Islam

• Battal Gazi: The Epic of the Battle of Battal, the story of the battle between the Turkish and Arab Muslim heroes, Battal, with Byzantium (modern-day Turkey)
• Epic of Köroğlu: Köroğlu or (?) is the son of Ali Kishi. The name Köroğlu, a combination of Persian and Turkish
  , means 'the son of a blind man'. Ali Kishi is blinded by his tyrant master and takes refuge in the mountains with two legendary horses and his son. During his adventures, Köroğlu obtains his sword and horses and defeats the tyrant lord.
• Edigu: Edigu was a Turkic Muslim emir of the White Horde and founder of the Nogai Horde.
• Danishmend Gazi: Danishmend Gazi was the founder of the beylik of Danishmends. After the Turkish advance into Anatolia, following the Battle of Manzikert, his dynasty controlled the north-central regions in Anatolia.
• Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan: Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan was one of the first Turkic rulers to convert to Islam,
• Alpamysh: Love story of Alpamish and Barchin.
• Ural Batyr
  : The story of Ural and his legends taken from Persian and Bashkir stories.

Epic of King Gesar in Turkic peoples

Chadwick and Zhirmunsky consider that the main outlines of the cycle as we have it in Mongolia, Tibet and Ladakh show an outline that conforms to the pattern of heroic poetry among the Turkic peoples.

(a) Like the Kirghiz hero Bolot, Gesar, as part of an initiation descends as a boy into the underworld.

(b) The gateway to the underworld is through a rocky hole or cave on a mountain summit.

(c) He is guided through the otherworld by a female tutelary spirit (Manene/grandmother) who rides an animal, like the Turkic shamaness kara Chach.

(d) Like kara Chach, Gesar's tutelary spirit helps him against a host of monstrous foes in the underworld.

(e) Like Bolot, Gesar returns in triumph to the world, bearing the food of immortality and the water of life.

(f) Like the Altai shamans, Gesar is borne heavenward on the back of a bird to obtain herbs to heal his people.

They conclude that the stories of the Gesar cycle were well known in the territory of the Uyghur Khaganate.^[42]

Orkhon Inscriptions and Creation narrative

The Old Turkic Orkhon inscriptions tells about Father-Heaven and Mother Earth giving raise to Mankind (child):

"When the blue Heaven above and the brown Earth beneath arose, between the twain Mindkind arose."^[43]

Mankind was not created but the result of interaction between heaven and earth.

Legendary origins of the Turkic peoples

One of the most important features of Turkic mythology is that each tribe, however small, has a personal descent legend. For example, in the Oğuzname, the legend of the descent of each mentioned tribe is told first.

Another well-known genesis legend is the genesis of the

Siberian Turkic mythology

The Turkic peoples of Siberia are the ones who have kept Turkic mythology the most lively, colorful and preserved. Until today, they still worship the sacred beings of Tengrism and continue to keep the legend tradition of the old Turks alive.

For example, there is an ancient mythology among people of Dolgan, whose numbers are very low. Dolgans, living in the Tundra climate in the far north of Siberia, occasionally encounter Mammoth corpses, half of which have not been thawed out of the ground for 10,000 years, during their nomads. The Dolgans believe that Erlik Khan, the lord of the underworld, took the mammoths into the underworld and made them serve him. According to their beliefs, mammoths are trapped in the underworld. If they try to get to the earth, they will freeze immediately as a punishment. According to Vasily Radlov, Dolgans explained that these giant animals, which they had never seen alive, were half buried, half out, and frozen in this way. In Altaians, Yakuts, and other Siberian Turks, too, it is the good and evil spirits and sacred beings who are responsible for much of what goes on in their world. By praying and giving victim, they try to make them pleasant so that the blessings are not interrupted.^{[citation needed]}

Buddhist Turkic mythology

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In the 9th century, they adopted the

Among these few remains are legends designed to bring new monks to monasteries. For example, someone tells a terrible story to portray material life as bad and disgusting (Old Turkic):

körüp ince sakıntı. Bo menin yutuzum bo tep içgerü kirip ülüg birle yattı... Yeme esrökin biligsizin üçün ölügüg kuçup uluvsuz bilig sürüp ol ölügke katıltı küçedükinte ötrü ölüg yarıltı... ol yarsinçıg et'özinteki kan irin arıgsız yablak taşıltı tökülti... yeme ol tözün är kamag özi tonı baştan adakka tegü kanka irinke örgenip uvutsuz biligin üçün esrükin ögsüz bolup könülina anıg ögrünçülük boltum tep sakıntı... ançagınçagan yarın yarudı kün tugdı... ol tözün er esröki adıntı usınta uduntı birök başın yokarı kötürüp körti supurgan icre yatukın koyınta ölüg yatur irin kan tökülür tüze yıdıyor kenti özün körtü kop kanka bulganmış arıgsızka ürgenmişin körüp ötrü belinledi anıg korkutı ulug ünün manradı terkin tul tonka taşıkıp tezdi nece yügürür erti anca kusar yarsıyur erti ol munca arıg ton kedsimişin antak terkin butarlayu üze bice yırtıp taşgaru kemişti ancak yügürtü bardı.. bir toş boşına tegti.. ötrü özin ol toş başına kemişti yuntı arıtıntı ol..^{[citation needed]}

In the story quoted above, a desperate man, whose wife died and was drinking,^[

, far from the whole material world.

Gazelle Hunt

In some other stories the subject of Buddha's being reborn in other bodies is dealt with. In one of the stories, an unstable

Buddha

. The golden gazelle warns the ruler and orders him to stop taking life, but the ruler does not listen. The golden gazelle will punish them all badly in the end.

Modern interpretations

Decorative arts

Russian Federation

• A motif of the tree of life is featured on Turkish 5-kuruş-coins, circulated since early 2009.
• The flag of the
  Chuvash Republic, a federal subject of Russia, is charged with a stylized tree of life
  , a symbol of rebirth, with the three suns, a traditional emblem popular in Chuvash art. Deep red stands for the land, the golden yellow for prosperity.

See also

• Finnic mythology
• Hungarian mythology
• Mongol mythology
• Manchu mythology
• Tibetan mythology
• Scythian mythology
• Shamanism in Siberia
• Turkish folklore
• Susulu (mythology)
• Turkic creation myth

Notes