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translation: “Hey Russia, Russia, my dear mother! I open my arms wide for a mountain bird like You, I cannot resist to say one true word: We are only people and human beings because of You!” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 1 6 read a lot about Japanese Zen philosophy and the philosophy of Buddhism.
In the past, when we were little, our grandfathers and elders used to make us read Manas [Kyrgyz national epic] to them. When reading it, we would get bored. However, the time and life of those past years brought our generation into the history and world of Manas. [Manas] was indeed nourishment to our mind.355 Then, when you get older and become more mature, you begin to explore all these things on a new level. By putting all these things together, I saw a big system. Now, when you look at our literature, songs, proverbs, and customs, they all seem to stand separately. However, when you look deeper, there is a big stem, which unites them all. All of these things seem to circle around that stem. As soon as they hold on to that stem, they make up a whole system [please see my comments in the conclusion of this chapter]. That stem is
Where did you begin researching Tengirchilik! At that time literature on these topics was almost nonexistent [in Russian and in Kyrgyz]. In 1967 there was only one book published on Asian philosophies, called Materialisty i ateisti drevnego Kitaya [Materialists and Atheists of Ancient China]. Later, in 1971, books were published such as Filosofia Drevnego Kitaya [The Philosophy o f Ancient China], I read all these books like I was picking gold from sand. They changed my inner world and thinking. I read all of this literature in Russian. After reading them, you start looking at yourself from outside. If you don’t know your neighbor people’s philosophy and history, you cannot respect and value yourself. You begin to respect yourself when you do comparisons. In well-known Chinese literature you find our proverbs and sayings. After that I realized that one should look at our own folklore, customs and rituals from the outside. This resulted in finding out about
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We had a similar experience in our family while growing up. My father would tell us that we should read Manas [he had most o f the popular volumes published during the Soviet period]. When I and my younger brothers read it, we would get bored reading the long texts o f poetic lines. My father, knowing that the epic was not meant to be read, but sung out loud with a melody and acted out using facial expressions and hand gestures, would read the epic out loud using one o f the popular melodies used by singers of Manas. That made a big difference. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 17 Where did the term Tengirchilik come from? There is a chapter called “Tengrianstvo” in Oljas’ [Oljas Suleymenov, a well-known Kazakh writer] book.356 That book had a great impact on me. For many centuries our ancestors have used expressions like Koko Tengir (Blue Tengir/(Sky) God) and Tengirim koldosun! “May [my] Tengir (Sky) God protect!” These expressions are the source for the creation of the term. In 1991, after independence, the old regime was gone, and Marxism and Leninism were no longer relevant. But every state should be built on the basis of some kind of an ideology or philosophy. We were faced with this problem and I wrote this book [Tengirchilik] at that time. My plans about writing literary works and novels ceased. I was very much drawn in the other direction.
The Sumerians believed in Tengirchilik in 3500 B.C. Their poetry has traces of literary terms of that time. We find the word “dingir” in the Sumerian period. In other words, the word Tengir has been in use for 5500 years. Now lets look at all the world religions. Buddhism is 2500 years old, Confucianism and Lao Tsu about 2500, Zoroastrianism is 3000 years old, the Prophet Jesus [Christianity] 2000 years, and the Prophet Muhammad [Islam] is 1400. All of these religions are quite young. And the stems of all these religions lie in Tengirchilik, because Tengirchilik spread to all of them. You mentioned Sufism. The Sumerians are considered one of the most ancient peoples, and from them the Akkadian civilization grew. They are the ancestors of the Semitic peoples: the Arabs, the Jews, and the peoples of northern Africa. In the heart of these Semitic peoples’ culture lies the world of the Sumerians. After the Akkadians, they were divided into the two kingdoms of Babylon and Assyria, whose worldview influenced the Bible, which then later influenced the Quran. The Quran and the Bible are the worldview of the 356
Oljas Suleymenov is a well-known Kazakh writer, who writes in Russian. Like many other native intellectuals, he mastered the Russian language and used it in his writing in order to reach a wider audience for his works. Oljas Suleymenov became best known and respected for his political campaign against the Soviet Union’s nuclear testing that were conducted in the Semipalatinks (Kazakh name is “Semei”) region o f northwestern Kazakhstan. In 1980’s started the movement called “Semei-Nevada” to protest the nuclear testings in Soviet union and in the United States. 357
It should be noted that after the adoption o f Islam the term Tengir was replaced with Persian “quday” “God” and Arabic “Allah.” Few people use Tengir when referring to God nowadays. Today, it is more common to say “Kuday jalgas'fn” “May God bless you” than “Tengir jalgasi'n” or Kuday ursun “May God hit/curse you!” than ‘Tengir ursun.” But the new terms are used in the previously existing cultural context. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 318 Semitic peoples. The ideas of Tengirchilik were transmitted to them through the Sumerians. You asked about Sufism. The root of Sufism lies in Tengirchilik. In world literature no one has discovered the meaning of the word suf. They say that it came from a special coat’s name worn by men. Actually, it comes from the [Turkic] word [verb] sev- (stiy- in Kyrgyz), ‘to love’. It comes from the two and half thousand-year-old Chinese hieroglyph called she. It is more than 2500 years old and Islam is only 1400 years old. Contemporary official scholarship maintains that the origin of Sufism is Neoplatonism, which later got transmitted to Islam. In reality, its origin lies in Tengirchilik. Everything that we consider not ours is in reality ours. Our worldview spread to all of them. Tengirchilik got transmitted to Zoroastrianism. Through the ancient Aries it got transmitted to the sacred books of the Indians. The root of all the sacred Indian Vedas lies in the Rig Vida. The world cannot determine the meaning of the term ‘Rig Vida’. The Russians say that ‘Vida’ came from the Indo-European word
my opinion, ‘Rig Vida’ means “sacred book.” Tengirchilik also became transmitted to the ancient Indian spiritual and religious world. Each religious teaching, such as Buddhism, has key concepts. For example, Sufism fosters i'shqi or ashiq, love [for God]. Today, many scholars think that these words came from Arabic. However, in reality, they took them from us. Most of these words represent our worldview. In the Chinese worldview, one of the most prestigious philosophies is Daoism. The word ‘dao’ came from the Kyrgyz phrase dal ordo, which means the “center,” or the “central part.” Is this your own theory? I discovered this meaning by studying the etymology of Chinese characters. The Chinese don’t know about it themselves. The world functions in this way. We learned about the western worldview through the Russians. Now it is time to look beyond that. It is said that Daoism is about this and that, that it is the true Chinese philosophy; the ancient Indian philosophy is this and the ancient Biblical worldview is that — in short, everyone has their own interest, because there are things such as Sino-centrism, Asia-centrism, Euro-centrism, and so on. Due to these positions, people have manipulated many things. Today, we continue to teach these things in our schools and universities. However, when one analyzes the [Chinese] letters, one finds our native concepts.358 Our task is to uncover the deep truth. 358
During the interview, Omuraliev wrote down many Chinese characters and explained very interestingly how their form and structure reflected Kyrgyz/Turkic religious and ecological concepts and values. He mentioned that he is working alone in this research and hopes to publish his findings about the origin of Chinese characters. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 319 Is this because historically the nomadic Kyrgyz were in close contact with the Chinese fo r one thousands o f years? The first state confederacy in China was the Shan Gin [Shang-Yin], which was from the eleventh to seventeenth centuries. The period from the eleventh to the fifth - fourth centuries is considered the Shoo [Zhou in Chinese] period. Then comes the Qin dynasty. Today, we [Kyrgyz] are celebrating 2200 years of our statehood.359 This period is the history after the Fin dynasty. Before that, there exist two big periods of Shan Gin and Shoo, which have their own writings. In studying those writings deeply one learns that they are indeed the writings of our Turkic-speaking peoples. World scholarship does not tell you that, because it does not know where the religious writings come from. It is one of the main riddles of modem science. Then does it mean the Chinese and Turkic languages are one language? [Dastan] Sari'gulov visited Altay, the ancient homeland Turkic peoples. He started his trip in Yakutia and ended in Turkey.360 Today official scholarship does not know to which language category the Chinese [Mandarin] language belongs. They just categorize it conditionally as Sino-Tibetan. Languages are classified in two ways: one is based on typology and the second on genealogy. Type is based on sentence structure: subject and verb. However, scholars don’t know the genealogy of the Chinese language. That’s why they just studied it typologically and classified it together with Tibetan and Burmese. Swedish scholar, who tried to reconstruct the Chinese language phonetically, wrote this book that I am holding. Today Chinese scholars use this book, because they don’t recognize the phonetic sounds of the ancient Chinese language. They use this book by Bernhard Karlgren. There are some passages that show the commonalities between the Finno-Ugric and Altaic languages. He just followed his intuition, but mostly tried to reconstruct their phonetics. Most of those archaic words end up being related to our language. If this theory becomes recognized, the world sciences would need to be studied quite differently. 359
The year 2003 in Kyrgyzstan was announced by UNESCO as the “2200 Year o f Kyrgyz Statehood” (Kyrgyz mamlekettiiulunun 2200 j'lldi'gi). This date is based on Chinese historical record which mentions the name Kyrgyz and their relationship with Chinese rulers. 360
Recently a special delegation of Kyrgyz scholars and Turkologists such as Kadi'rali Konkobayev visited the Altay region and the northwestern Mongolia which are considered the ancient homeland o f nomadic Kyrgyz. They for the first time saw with their own eyes those historical stone monuments and Old Turkic writings from the 7-8th centuries CE and brought back many valuable materials about the ancient past and culture o f the nomadic Kyrgyz. The Turkish government and the Kyrgyz Turkish Manas University in Bishkek sponsored several publications o f the new materials and findings o f the scholarly expedition. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32 0 When you decipher the Chinese characters, do you work together with Chinese scholars? No, they don’t try to do this work themselves. They limit their study with hieroglyphs. They talk mainly about the Zhou and Yin periods. The Chinese letters all consist of pictures. Just one character gives several different sounds and meanings. When one breaks it down, one finds its root in our language. There are 214 keys in reading Chinese letters. The letters and these keys work together and create 60,000 hieroglyphs. And all of these 214 keys are now deciphered in our language. I finished them. So, what is “In”? It is a state confederacy. Shang Yan, which means Chayan khan [in Kyrgyz], was one of the ancestors of Manas. Chayan khan’s dynasty was called Shanglar, whereas, the Yin were the Boyon khan’s dynasty.361 Writing is one of the first signs of civilization. So, our writing is 4500 years old. The west associates civilization only with sedentary culture. The original meaning of the word “civil” is “sedentary.” In other words, civilization became affiliated only with sedentary peoples, who lived in houses and villages; and we were brainwashed by this idea. In reality, the concept of civilization is
the human’s heart. Rukhaniyat should be considered the first determining criteria of civilization. The civilization of nomadic peoples derived from their unique life style and their harmonious relationship with nature. They created their own worldview and philosophy. Therefore, we should not understand the concept of civilization as the property of sedentary peoples. We must also give our own description and thus change the criteria.
There is a book written by A1 Bukhari titled “History of Bukhara.” It tells about the history of early Islam in Central Asia in the eighth to ninth centuries, and it describes its brutality. The book was written right at the 36lSayakbay Karalaev’s version o f Manas begins with the following verse lines: His ancestral father is Boyon Khan, From Boyon Khan is Chayan Khan, From Chayan Khan is Nogoy Khan, From Nogoy Khan is Bala Khan From Bala Khan is Kara Khan (Manas. Version by Sayakbay Karalayev, Vol. I, Frunze: Kyrgyzstan, 1984, p. 27). 362
The word ‘civil’ implies sedentary. Modern use o f the word civil usually means ‘polite’, or relating to government activities (like one’s civic duty). [The etymology o f the word civil, at www.etymonline.com, says: “Civil: 1387
, from L. civilis "of or proper to a citizen," alternate adj. derivation o f civis "townsman"]. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 321 time when these tragic events took place. Later, many facts were hidden and they lied, saying that Islam was adopted peacefully in Central Asia. In this way, Islam was adopted. People have been practicing it together with their native customs. Islam and Tengirchilik have one principle. People have been living following their own customs and traditions. What kind of process is taking place today? They [foreign and local Islamic clergy] are forcing people to adopt it fully through radio and television. The process is occurring of introducing by force everything that is taking place in Arabia. However, the culture of those people living in the desert and here is different. They are not compatible. For example, in the south (southern Kyrgyzstan), they tell people to bury their dead as soon as the person dies. Yes, the condition in hot places did not allow them to keep their dead for a long time. But we lived in the cool mountains here, and people waited for each other and showed their last respect to the deceased. People waited for two, five and seven days until all the relatives and people arrived. They sang mourning songs in which they glorified the deeds of the deceased person, starting from his birth until his death. Such a custom does not exist in other cultures. Others think that we are just singing songs, however, the philosophy is different. If people follow what the mullahs say, they will lose their koshok, [funeral lament]. Koshok is a great world in itself. We have Kani'key’s koshok, a koshok sung in honor of Ormon Khan [19th century] and so on. These are not simple rituals, but rather people’s worldview. If we lose this tradition, we lose our essence of being a [Kyrgyz] people. For example, official Islam forbids the worshipping of or requesting help from mazars [saint shrines]. They do not want to hear the word arbak [deceased’s spirit/ancestral spirit]. You mentioned that people adopted Islam because it was similar to Tengirchilik. At the same time, however, you say that the idea o f God and arbak being one thing is not accepted in Islam. Nothing is equal to God. Let’s see how different religions understand God. For example, in Christianity, God, who sits over there [in the sky] and creates the world. In other words, there is a division between the world and God. The same is true about Allah. The mullahs say that Allah creates everything and we are makuluks [slaves] before him. Again, there is a space between God and human beings. What is God? This is a dilemma. God exists in everything, alive and inanimate things. There are all kinds of views. Tengir constitutes everything: mountains, rocks, rivers, trees, and so on. Totemism is viewed as the worship of animals only. It is believed that animals are considered God, or that when people worship mazars, they consider them God and therefore holy places. But others [westerners/Christians] think that the real God is left on the side, and that they are worshipping the mountains and rocks. However, in reality, all of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. these acts indeed denote worshipping the great force, God, through these objects, which serve as transmitters of their worship and prayers. They become connected with God [“tutumdash” — “to become connected, to become one”] through transmitters such as the holy kayberen [protector/master spirit of wild hoofed animals].363 The word “totem” comes from our [Kyrgyz/Turkic] word tutum. It came from an Indian [Native American] language.
Yes, if you study their history, most of them are the burial places of some Sufi sheikhs or oluyas. According to our worldview, oluyas [from the Arab [“awliya”] and sop us [Sufis] are mediators between us and God and they transmit our messages to God. Therefore, people consider the mazars as holy places and worship them. There are many historical issues which relate to linguistics. The Sumerian language is a completely different language from the non-Semitic. Nobody knows who the Tocharians are. We are talking about the thirty-fifth century B.C., 5500 years ago. They lived on the banks of the Tigris River. Sumerian and our language share a common root. I saw it in my own analysis. There are similarities in our languages and customs. I cannot pinpoint exactly this or that word, but many words have a common root. We have a dictionary by Khuseyin Karasayev,364 who classified many words as Arabic or Persian based on phonetic similarities. We should be careful when finding the etymology of words. It is a one-sided view to say that this word is Arabic and that word is Persian. You know Alisher Navoi, a great poet, wrote a book in which he compared the Turkic and Persian languages. Navoi said that Persian is a rich language and all literature is written in Persian. However, he also said that the Turkic language was not less than Persian and Arabic, especially in terms of coherence and expressiveness. He gave examples of words in Turkic and Persian. Many of those words and terms were directly related to nomadic culture. Just by looking at words in the dictionary and saying that they come from Arabic or Persian, we are degrading our language and putting the others above ourselves. This is because we don’t know who we are, our history and philosophy. 363
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