On the cult of the bull in the ancient views of the Crimean Tatars (based on oral folklore materials)

02.09.201916:30

Crimea!   A descendant who later manifests himself here! If your mind means, you will ask: who are we?

Who are we? Ask the dawn, ask the wave, ask the moon, ask Salgyr and Chatyr-Dag, ask for the land of our own and the defiled dust.

If your mind understands, you know that in order for your essence of changing, you don’t need centuries, if the nests are echidna of treachery and fear – the dignity of the people will disintegrate.

(From the sad history of the Crimean Tatars).

… The life of our distant ancestors with the beginning of agriculture and cattle breeding was entirely dependent on the nature around them: the vagaries of the weather, the variability of the elements, the solar heat, water and rain.

Knowing the great secrets of the celestial cycle, the changing of the seasons, the extinction and awakening of nature, the attention of the ancestors pointed at the location of the stars and the course of the celestial bodies with which they begin to measure the course of time, the timing of agricultural work and the change of pastures.

Accordingly, abstract thought wakes up in: the idea of ​​the spirit, the soul, magic, totemism and fetishism arise. On their basis, the magical rites of the fertility cult are formed in order to ensure a good crop and livestock.

One of the lucky discoveries of the English archaeologist James Mellard in 1961 on the Konya Plateau in Turkey (the settlement of Chatal-Yuyuk) takes us to the 7th millennium BC. In the reconstruction of the dwelling according to J. Mellard, there is a hearth and a strange clay stand with a bull’s horns, and above, in a light focus from rare and narrow windows, a solar halo illuminates the head of a huge figure of a deity, under which you can see three huge bullheads of dyed red clay and topped with real horns.

From other details of this dwelling, it is amazing painted patterns of wall panels, an intricate geometric pattern of zigzag lines and rhombuses, similar to the carpet drawings of the Turkmen.

And, finally, an impressive drawing of a huge, as if coming out of the water, cow or a bull with sickle-like horns.

So, in front of  us is the wonderful world of settled farmers and herdsmen with a pronounced bull cult, the sanctuary with a variety of images of sacred bulls, as well as a small figure of the goddess Great Mother, extending her arms over the calves.

But what does all this have to do with the Crimean Tatars? – The reader will ask.

The area where the wild bull was tamed — the “Tour” in the 8th – 5th millenniums BC, occupied a considerable territory from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, where various pieces of evidence of the veneration of livestock are noted.

“Tour” – a wild bull, which was found in the Crimea as well, in ancient Turkic means “strong”.

A contemporary of the father of the history of Herodotus, who lived in 485-425 BC, Heryl Samosky calls the tours … shepherds inhabiting “rich in wheat  Asia, i.e. Turan” is a vast region of Central Asia.

The name of this country of Turs connects with the tribes of the catacomb culture, who, engaging in universal cultural exchange, leave Central Asia in the third millennium BC and settle in the Crimea, leaving their mark here in the form of Dor, Tor, Tauri, and Tura. A descendant of Tura was the legendary Afrasiyab, who led a long struggle with the Persian king Cyrus.

… During the Second World War, when the fascist German troops entered the Crimea, the elders of the village of Uskut, in order to save the village from bombing, performed a ritual ceremony, sacrificing a bull meant for this event. They killed him so that the skin was preserved along with his head, and the separated carcass, divided into parts, began to be cooked in large boilers for a three-piece booth.

While the meat was boiled, the aksakals, lifting the head of the bull along with the skin, alternately directing it to four sides of the village and reading prayers, performed a ceremony, after which not a single bomb fell on this village (recorded from Ibrahim Chegertmy ).

The roots of this ceremony go back to deep Scythian antiquity when the descendants of Afrasiyab mastered the Crimean land.

The cult of the bull, with which this rite is linked, played an important role in the lives of our ancestors and was multifaceted. Peering at the sickle-shaped forms of bovine horns and unwittingly comparing them with the sickles of a growing and fading moon, people began to associate the cult of the bull with the Moon, the goddess of fertility and motherhood.

Over time, all this began to influence the formation of traditions and rituals, the echoes of which have reached our days. For example, such a thing as “matchmaking” («sez kesim “) is directly related to cutting a sacrificial bull for this purpose.

The ceremony took place in this way: the carcass was separated from the skin and, divided into parts, was boiled in large copper Scythian cauldrons (“qazanas”). In the meantime, the two parties who had gathered to join the two loving halves for the creation of a family stood on the skin of the sacrificial bull and gave each other a vow that couldn’t be broken. After that, this agreement was reinforced by the festive banquet.

The ritual of summoning rain during a long drought was also associated with the bull cult, as evidenced by the ritual folklore text below:

YagYag yagmurym,

Qartana soyarym,

Mayyn, etin asharym,

Kanyn kokke sacharym.

Pour down, my rain, pour down.

And I will sacrifice a black bull.

Fat and meat I will eat,

And I will scatter remaining blood across the sky.

Since we are talking about the ritual of summoning rain, it is necessary to add that the fertility deity has always been accompanied by the sign of the Snake, the creature closest to the aquatic environment. Crimean Tatars of the south-western Crimea, had a rite of calling for rain with the help of a snake.

It looked like this: they caught the snake and hung it by the tail with it’s head upside down over the water surface, and when the snake began being tormented by thirst, it was forced to pray to Heaven for rain.

Finally, if neither a bull nor a snake was available, the ancestors’ spirits turned for help in this way: they went to the cemetery (“mezarlyk”) and removed a wooden stake sticking from the head of a fresh grave with the inscription of the deceased. Then, having tied this wooden stake with a rope at one end, they threw it into the water. After the rain caused in this way, the wooden stake was returned to its place.

In conclusion, I would like to say about the situation in which our people found themselves. Time after time to experience the blows of fate, exacerbated in each new phase of history as the fateful legacy of our ancestors. Is this our destiny?

Can we finally grasp the essence of the ill-fated “Felek chember”in the prolonged drama of our entire”Kin”? We who again and again demonstrating our incompetence to self-organize internally into that same unity called the nation.

” Halq qazany ateshiz qaynar ”   (“The cauldron of the nation boils without fire” – ed.) , – isn’t it what the popular proverb from the times of hoary antiquity said about this when the unity of the Scythians personified the huge Copper Cauldron “ Baqyr qazan . Our ancestors cast it from arrowheads – “oq”, according to the principle of one arrow “oq ” – one house – “ev”, based on the realization that the strength of these foundations – houses (“ev”) builds up and nourishes , a single and viable organism of the whole nation. Anadan korgen – ton bicher ,babadan korygen – oq atar (“The one who learned from mother will sew a fur coat, and the one who learned from father will shoot an arrow”, – ed.).

The clarification of this thought is connected with the definition of the locality where this shrine was established by the Scythians – “Bakyr qazan”. According to Herodot’s “History”, the area ” Exampai ” – ” Akchambay ” (the ancient author translates it as “the source of the sacred path”) corresponds to the rock Aq-Qaya near Qarasubazar . This is indicated by the name Aq Kaya (“Sacred Crag”) in the sense of the meaning of the ancient order, the construction of this area to the rank of “source of the sacred path”, the path to unity.

Aq-Kaya  in the times of the Khanate aswell personified holiness itself because when tensions arose in relations between the khan and the Crimean beys, the latter trumpeted the summit and met at Aq-Qaya .

Our future, its vagueness in a joyless and estranged father’s house leads only to one thought: are we ready to recognize the humiliating news of our helpless position in our native walls and are we burning with the desire to gain respect and appearance worthy of a whole nation? Will we finally be able to accept the prideful position of priesthood so necessary for us?

And that, sacred action, is vital for restoring an interrupted space-time connection, for the cradle of the nation: Ana Yurt, Altyn Beshik; is waiting for us to repent, repent before the desecrated dust of our ancestors, repentance before the Earth and Heaven, the beginning of all existence, repentance before Tanry !

This Moleben-repentance – Tevbe duasy must be held at Aq-Qaya with the rite of the sacrifice of the Bull.

This sacred rite will be a checkpoint of our clarifying and liberation, our new birth for great achievements.

Enver Seferov,    Qırım ” 2017, January 4, № 1

Artist Ramazan Usein

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Author: Редакция Avdet

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