Irk Bitig’in 27. Falının Yeni Bir Yorumu

Abstract

Since the first edition of the Irk Bitig (Thomsen 1912), several scholars have worked on the analysis of the texts, primarily from a linguistic point of view. Some of the short stories in the omens are clear and easy to understand, but there are also many that are grammatically or semantically rather problematic. The meaning of the 27th omen is relatively clear and easy to analyse. In the translations so far, controversy has arisen over the precise meaning of only one word. Some translators have interpreted the Old Turkic verb ämsi- as a simulative form of the verb äm- ‘to suck / suckle’, but in fact there are no other examples of such a deverbal verb formative. Although the linguistically verifiable verb ämsi- ‘to cure / medicate’, derived from the noun äm ‘medicine’, was raised as a possibility, it was rejected as semantically unacceptable and incompatible with the text. In this article, I offer a new interpretation of the omen, and show that the previous interpretations were based on a premise (in the case of the sheep and the wolf, good and evil could only be manifested in the opposition of ‘good sheep ‒ bad wolf’), which was in fact induced by the cultural background of the interpreters, and which may not be taken for granted in the case of the old Turks.

Keywords

• Old Turkic
• Irk Bitig
• divination
• Omen 27

A new interpretation of omen 27 of the Irk Bitig

Öz

Since the first edition of the Irk Bitig (Thomsen 1912), several scholars have worked on the analysis of the texts, primarily from a linguistic point of view. Some of the short stories in the omens are clear and easy to understand, but there are also many that are grammatically or semantically rather problematic. The meaning of the 27th omen is relatively clear and easy to analyse. In the translations so far, controversy has arisen over the precise meaning of only one word. Some translators have interpreted the Old Turkic verb ämsi- as a simulative form of the verb äm- ‘to suck / suckle’, but in fact there are no other examples of such a deverbal verb formative. Although the linguistically verifiable verb ämsi- ‘to cure / medicate’, derived from the noun äm ‘medicine’, was raised as a possibility, it was rejected as semantically unacceptable and incompatible with the text. In this article, I offer a new interpretation of the omen, and show that the previous interpretations were based on a premise (in the case of the sheep and the wolf, good and evil could only be manifested in the opposition of ‘good sheep ‒ bad wolf’), which was in fact induced by the cultural background of the interpreters, and which may not be taken for granted in the case of the old Turks.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Old Turkic
• Irk Bitig
• divination
• Omen 27

Kaynakça

1. Clauson, G. (1961). Notes on the «Irq bitig». Ural-altaische Jahrbücher, 33, 218-225.
2. Clauson, G. (1972). An etymological dictionary of pre-thirteenth-century Turkish. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Cross, S. H. & Sherbowitz-Wetzor, O. P. (1953). The Russian Primary Chronicle, Laurentian text. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America.
4. Danka, B. (2019). The ‘pagan’ Oguz-nāmä: A philological and linguistic analysis. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
5. Dankoff, R. & Kelly, J. (1982‒1985). Maḥmūd al-Kāšγarī: Compendium of the Turkic dialects (Dīwān Luγāt at-Turk) I-III. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6. Erdal, M. (1978). Irk Bitig üzerine yeni notlar. Türk Dili Araştırmaları Yıllığı Belleten (1977), 87-119.
7. Erdal, M. (1991). Old Turkic word formation. A functional approach to the lexicon I-II. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
8. Erdal, M. (1997). Further notes on the Irk Bitig. Turkic Languages, 1, 63-100.

9. Galambos, I. (2022). The bilingual manuscript with the Irk Bitig: London, British Library, Or. 8242/161. In Clarke, M. & Mhaonaigh, M. Ní. (Eds.), Medieval multilingual manuscripts. Case studies from Ireland to Japan (pp. 83‒97). Berlin: De Gruyter.
10. Garkavec, A. (2022). Yrk bitig. Drevnetyurkskaya runičeskaya kniga gadaniy X vek. Almaty: Baur.
11. Golden, P. (1997). Wolves, dogs and Qïpchaq religion. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 50(1-3), 87-97.
12. Hamilton, J. (1975). Le colophon de l’Irk Bitig. Turcica, 7, 7-19.
13. Ikeda, T. (1984). トルコ語の占い文書（Irq Bitig）に就いて [The Ïrq Bitig, an ancient Turkic book on divination]. 国際言語科学研究所所報 [The bulletin of the International Institute for Linguistic Sciences Kyoto Sangyo University], VI(1), 81‒125.
14. Likhachev, D. S. & Tvorogov, O. V. (2012). Povest’ vremennykh let. Sankt-Peterburg: Vita Nova.
15. Liu, Mau-Tsai. (1958). Die chinesischen Nachrichten zur Geschichte der Ost-Türken (T’u-Küe) I‒II. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
16. Malov, S. E. (1951). Pamyatniki drevnetyurkskoy pis’mennosti. Teksty i issledovaniya. Moskva-Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR.
17. Molnár, Á. (1996). Traces of shamanism in the Irk Bitig „Book of Divination”. In Uluslararası Türk Dili Kongresi 1992 (26 Eylül 1992-1 Ekim 1992) (pp. 367-371). Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları.
18. Orkun, H. N. (1936-1941). Eski Türk Yazıtları I-IV. Ankara: Devlet Basımevi.
19. Pekarskiy, E. K. (1907). Slovar’ yakutskogo yazyka I. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Rossiyskoy Akademii Nauk.
20. Roux, J. P. (2011). Eski Türk Mitolojisi. Ankara: Bilge Su.
21. Sevortyan, E. V. (1974). Etimologicheskiy slovar’ tyurkskikh yazykov I. Moskva: Nauka.
22. Tekin, T. (1993). Irk Bitig. The book of omens. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
23. Thomsen, V. (1912). Dr. M. A. Stein’s manuscripts in Turkish ‘runic’ script from Miran and Tun-Huang. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 44(1), 181-227.
24. Tryjarski, E. (1979). The dog in the Turkic area: An ethnolinguistic study. Central Asiatic Journal, 23(3), 297-319.
25. Uçar, E. & Demiryakan, D. (2024). Altun Yaruq Sudur üzerine yapılan çalışmaların güncellenmiş kaynakçası (1908-2023). Journal of Old Turkic Studies, 8(1), 130-164.
26. Ünal, O. (2022). Bir kez daha Irk Bitig’in kırkıncı Irkı üzerine. Bitig: Türkoloji Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2022(1), 11-17.
27. Yakovlev, V. M. (2004). Yrk bitig: Drevnetyurkskaya gadatel’naya kniga. Perevod, predislovie, primechaniya i slovar’ V. M. Jakovleva. Moskva: Institut Vostokovedeniya Rossiyskoy Akademii Nauk.
28. Yıldırım, F. (2013). Irk Bitig ve Runik Harfli Metinlerin Dili. Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi, İstanbul. (Published PhD thesis)
29. Yıldırım, F. (2017). Irk Bitig ve Runik Harfli Metinlerin Dili. Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu.
30. Zieme, P. (1996). Altun Yaruq Sudur. Vorworte und das erste Buch Edition und Übersetzung der alttürkischen Version des Goldglanzsutra. Berliner Turfantexte 18. Turnhout: Brepols.