Everything about Tengri totally explained
Tengri is the supreme god of the old
Xiongnu,
Xianbei,
Turkic,
Bulgar,
Mongolian,
Hungarian and
Altaic religion named
Tengriism.
There are no official symbols of
Tengriism, however the symbol of the World Tree and the four directions symbol are common. It is often confused with a
sun-worshipping religion, but the sun is merely a
symbol of Tengri. A dramatic
pyramidal mountain
peak, long believed to be the highest point on the border between
Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan, is called "
Khan Tengri".
Xiongnu version
First appeared in Chinese records as
Cheng Li (Chinese: ).
Mongol version
The core beings in
Tengriism are Sky-Father (Tengri/Tenger Etseg) and Mother Earth (
Eje/Gazar Eej). In history,
Genghis Khan, the unifier of the
Mongolian nation, based his power on a mandate from Tengri himself, and began all his declarations with the words "
by the will of Eternal Blue Heaven." Father Heaven is worshipped for what he is, the timeless and infinite blue sky. He isn't visualized as a person, although he's said to have at least two sons.
Geser is a great hero of
Tengriism and he's a reincarnation of a sky spirit sent to earth to help serve people as a shaman. His story is recounted in a very long
epic text, meant to be performed over the course of several days with a horse head fiddle (
moriin huur).
Turkic version
Tengri or the
god of blue sky was the main god of the Turkic
pantheon, controlling the heavenly universe. In the ancient Turkic
mythology, Tengri is a pure, white goose that flies constantly over an endless expanse of water, which represents time. Beneath this water, Ak Ana ("White Mother") calls out to him saying "Create". To overcome his loneliness, Tengri creates
Er Kishi, who isn't as pure or as white as Tengri and together they set up the world.
Er Kishi becomes a demonic character and strives to mislead people and draw them into its darkness. Tengri assumes the name
Tengri Ülgen and withdraws into
Heaven from which he tries to provide people with guidance through sacred animals that he sends among them. The
Ak Tengris occupy the fifth level of Heaven.
Shaman priests who want to reach
Tengri Ülgen never get further than this level, where they convey their wishes to the divine guides. Returns to earth or to the human level take place in a goose-shaped vessel.
In former Turkic states before the
Middle Ages, among them the
Göktürks, the
khans based their power on a mandate from Tengri themselves. These rulers were generally accepted as the sons of Tengri who represented him on Earth. They wore titles such as
tengrikut,
kutluġ or
kutalmysh, based on the belief that they attained the
kut, the mighty spirit granted to these rulers by Tengri.
Traditionally Turks' ancestors were
animists and nature worshippers. Through their shamanistic beliefs, they revered celestial gods and the natural forces on earth that were important to them. In the ancient
Turkish world as it's now, the word for god is "Tengri". In their religious beliefs, the sky is identified with Tengri. Tengri is considered to be the chief god who created all things. In addition to this celestial god, they also had minor divinities that served the purposes of Tengri.
According to
Mahmud Kashgari, Tengri was known to make plants grow and the lightning flash. Turks used the adjective
tengri which means "heavenly, divine", to label everything that seemed grandiose, such as a tree or a mountain, and they stooped to such entities.
In modern
Turkish, the derived word "
Tanrı" is used as the generic word for "god", also for the
Judeo–Christo–Islamic God, and is often used today by practicing
Muslim Turks to refer to God in Turkish as an alternative to the word "
Allah", the originally
Arabic Islamic word for "God". Also, "Tengri" is the oldest known
Turkic word, believed to have originated in the 6th century B.C.
Tengriism, a
monotheistic religion, replaced an earlier
polytheistic Turkic religion; it was also the religion of the
Huns,
Eurasian Avars, and early
Hungarians.
Similarity with Chinese Tian "Sky"
Tengri is analogous with
Tian. The
German sinologist Axel Schüssler suggests
tengri as an etymology for
tian 天 "sky; heaven; god":
"Because the deity Tiān came into prominence with the Zhou dynasty (a western state), a Central Asian origin has been suggested, note Mongolian tengri 'sky, heaven, heavenly deity'" (Shaughnessy Sino-Platonic Papers, July 1989, and others, like Shirakawa Shizuka before him). (2007:495)
While some linguists argue that actually the word
tian is the etymology for
tengri, some other linguistic studies accentuate a
Turkic etymology.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Tengri'.
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