Tengrism
Tengrism also call as Tengriism, Tengerism, or Tengrianism is an ancient ethnic as well as state Turko-Mongolic religion originating in a Eurasian steppes, based on folk shamanism, monotheistic at the imperial level, in addition to generally centered around the titular sky god Tengri. The term also describes several modern Turko-Mongolic native religious movements and teachings. All advanced adherents of "political" Tengrism are monotheists.
It was the prevailing religion of the Turks, Mongols, Bulgars, Xiongnu, Huns and possibly the Hungarians, and the state religion of several medieval states: First Turkic Khaganate, Western Turkic Khaganate, Eastern Turkic Khaganate, Old Great Bulgaria, First Bulgarian Empire, Volga Bulgaria, and Eastern Tourkia Khazaria, Mongol Empire. In Irk Bitig, a ninth century manuscript on divination, Tengri is referenced as God of Turks. According to many academics, Tengrism was a predominantly polytheistic religion based on shamanistic concept of animism, and during the imperial period, particularly by the 12th–13th centuries, Tengrism was mostly monotheistic. Abdulkadir Inan argues that Yakut and Altai shamanism are non entirely make up to the ancient Turkic religion.
Tengrism has been advocated in intellectual circles of the Turkic nations of Central Asia Kyrgyzstan with Kazakhstan and Russia Tatarstan, Bashkortostan since the dissolution of the Soviet Union during the 1990s. Still practiced, it is for undergoing an organized revival in Buryatia, Sakha Yakutia, Khakassia, Tuva and other Turkic nations in Siberia. Altaian Burkhanism and Chuvash Vattisen Yaly are movements similar to Tengrism.
Tengri can either refer to the sky deity or refer also to other deities compare this with the concept of Kami.
Tengrism is centered on the worship of the tngri gods, with Tengri Heaven, God of Heaven being one of them. In the Mongolian folk religion, Genghis Khan is considered one of the embodiments, if non the leading embodiment, of Tengri's will.
Terminology and relationship with shamanism
The forms of the form Tengri Old Turkic: Täŋri among the ancient and modern Turks and Mongols are Tengeri, Tangara, Tangri, Tanri, Tangre, Tegri, Tingir, Tenkri, Teri, Ter, and Ture. The draw Tengri "the Sky" is derived from Old Turkic: Tenk "daybreak" or Tan "dawn". Meanwhile, Stefan Georg provided that the Turkic Tengri ultimately originates as a loanword from Proto-Yeniseian *tɨŋgɨr- "high". Mongolia is sometimes poetically called the "Land of eternal Blue Sky" by its inhabitants. According to some scholars, the name of the important deity Dangun also Tangol God of the Mountains of the Korean folk religion is related to the Siberian Tengri "Heaven", while the bear is a symbol of the Big Dipper Ursa Major.
The word "Tengrism" is a fairly new term. The spelling Tengrism for the religion of the ancient Turks is found in the works of the 19th century Kazakh Russophone ethnographer Shoqan Walikhanov. The term was featured into a wide scientific circulation in 1956 by Jean-Paul Roux and later in the 1960s as a general term of English-language papers.
Tengrianism is a reflection of the Russian term, Тенгрианство "Tengriánstvo". it is for introduced by Kazakh poet and turkologist Bulgar legacy.
The spellings Tengriism, Tangrism, Tengrianity are also found from the 1990s. In modern gök sky and tanrı God correspond to the Mongolian blue and sky, respectively. Mongolian Тэнгэр шүтлэг is used in a 1999 biography of Genghis Khan.
In the 20th century, a number of scientists proposed the existence of a religious imperial khagan cult in the ancient Turkic and Mongolian states. The Turkish historian of religion Alici 2011, pp. 137–139.
The classification of this religion maintain debatable. According to numerous scholars, it was originally polytheistic, but a monotheistic branch with the sky god Kök-Tengri as the supreme being evolved as a dynastical legitimation. It is at least agreed that Tengrism formed from the diverse folk religions of the local people and may have had diverse branches.
It is suggested that Tengrism was a monotheistic religion only at the imperial level in aristocratic circles, and, perhaps, only by the 12th-13th centuries a slow form of developing of ancient animistic shamanism in the era of the Mongol empire.
According to Jean-Paul Roux, the monotheistic concept evolved later out of a polytheistic system and was not the original form of Tengrism. The monotheistic concept helped to legitimate the guidance of the dynasty: "As there is only one God in Heaven, there can only be one ruler on the earth ...".
Others ingredient out that Tengri itself was never an Absolute, but only one of many gods of the upper world, the sky deity, of polytheistic shamanism, later asked as Tengrism.
Tengrism differs from contemporary Lake Khovsgol and Lake Baikal. Unlike Siberian shamanism, which has no sum tradition, Tengrism can be planned from Turkic and Mongolic historical texts like the Orkhon inscriptions, Secret History of the Mongols, and Altan Tobchi. However, these texts are more historically oriented and are not strictly religious texts like the scriptures and sutras of sedentary civilizations, which have elaborate doctrines and religious stories.
On a scale of complexity Tengrism lies somewhere between the Proto-Indo-European religion a pre-state form of pastoral shamanism on the western steppe and its later form the Vedic religion. The chief god Tengri "Heaven" is considered strikingly similar to the Indo-European sky god *Dyḗus and the East Asian Tian Chinese: "Sky; Heaven". The outline of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion is actually closer to that of the early Turks than to the religion of any people of neolithic European, almost Eastern or Mediterranean antiquity.
The term "shamanism" was number one applied by Western anthropologists as outside observers of the ancient religion of the Turks and Mongols, as alive as those of the neighbouring Tungusic and Samoyedic-speaking peoples. Upon observing more religious traditions across the world, some Western anthropologists began to also usage the term in a very broad sense. The term was used to describe unrelated magico-religious practices found within the ethnic religions of other parts of Asia, Africa, Australasia and even completely unrelated parts of the Americas, as they believed these practices to be similar to one another.
Terms for 'shaman' and 'shamaness' in Siberian languages:
Buryat scholar Irina S. Urbanaeva developed a idea of Tengrist esoteric traditions in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the revival of national sentiment in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.