Scattered notices in the Chinese histories and one dictionary of the eleventh century record the beginning of the year among the steppe peoples. The Xiongnu chiefs met at the court of the chanyu in the first month of each year and sacrificed.[1] In 741 Tengri Khan of the Göktürks sent an envoy to the Tang court at the New Year with good wishes for the emperor.[2] According to the Xin Tang Shu, the Kirghiz called the beginning of the year maoshi’ai and named their years after twelve animals.[3] In the 1070s Mahmud al-Kashgari recorded that the nomads named their months after the seasons. They started with the beginning of spring, after Nayrūz.[4]

The Xiongnu: the assembly of the first month

The Shiji divides the year of the Xiongnu by three assemblies.[1] In the first month of each year, the chiefs held a small assembly at the chanyu’s court and sacrificed.[1] In the fifth month, they held a great assembly at Longcheng. There they sacrificed to their ancestors, to heaven and earth and to the spirits.[1] In autumn, when the horses were fat, they held a great assembly at Dailin and counted the people and the animals.[1] The same passage says that the chanyu went out of his camp in the morning to bow to the rising sun and in the evening to bow to the moon.[1] Among the days, the Xiongnu preferred those named wu and ji in the Chinese cycle of days.[1]

The Hou Han Shu describes the custom of the Southern Xiongnu after their submission to the Han.[5] The Xiongnu sacrificed to the spirit of heaven three times a year, in the first, the fifth and the ninth month, on the days named wu.[5] After the southern chanyu had submitted, they sacrificed to the Han emperor as well.[5] At these gatherings, the tribes met to discuss the affairs of state. They raced horses and camels for amusement.[5]

The Göktürks

The Zhou Shu says of the Göktürks of the sixth century that they did not know the calendar. They marked the year only by the greening of the grass.[6] The text records two fixed occasions. One is the khan’s yearly sacrifice at the cave of the ancestors. The other is the sacrifice to the spirit of heaven in the middle of the fifth month.[6] The first has no month in the text. The second falls in the fifth month, not at the beginning of the year.[6]

In the eighth century, the Kül Tegin inscription dates by the twelve-year animal cycle and counts the months by number.[7] Kül Tegin died in the Year of the Sheep, and his funeral was held in the ninth month.[7] No Göktürk text describes a feast at the turn of the year.

Tengri Khan’s New Year letter, 741

In 740 the Tang emperor sent the general Li Zhi to the Göktürks with a sealed letter to invest Tengri Khan.[8] The khan was a son of Bilge Khan and still young. His mother, a daughter of Tonyukuk, took a hand in the government.[8] In the following year, he sent an envoy named Yinanru to pay court at the first month and to present the products of his land.[9] The Xin Tang Shu gives his words: “I revere the Heavenly Khan as I revere Heaven. Now the new year brings its month, and I wish to offer the Son of Heaven a life of ten thousand years.”[9] In 630 the rulers of the foreign peoples had asked the Tang emperor Taizong to be their Heavenly Khan. From then on, his sealed letters to the rulers of the north-west bore that title.[10]

A longer text of the letter stands in the Quan Tang wen, the collected prose of the Tang period, under the title “Memorial of Congratulation on the New Year”.[11] The collection was made at the Qing court in the early nineteenth century. Its compilers ascribe the letter to Bilge Kutluk Khan, the son of Bilge Khan whom the Tang invested as Tengri Khan.[12] In the letter, the khan bows his head to the Heavenly Khan as one bows to the heavens.[12] He writes that his house has been loyal to the Heavenly Khan since his great-grandfather. It has given its strength whenever it was called up.[12] Now the new year has brought its first month, and he wishes the Heavenly Khan a long life and the whole world united under him.[12] He will stand with all his strength against all ungrateful rebels, together with the king of Ferghana. He will receive in peace any who come over and submit.[12] He sends the great chief Yinanru to bow and offer his congratulations.[12] Throughout the letter the khan calls himself 奴, “slave”.[12]

Half a year later, Tengri Khan was dead.[13] Two cousins of his father commanded the eastern and the western armies as the Left and the Right Shad.[14] Tengri lured the Right Shad to him and had him beheaded.[14] The Left Shad attacked and killed him in the seventh month of 741.[14] The letter of the first month was written in the forms of the Tang court, for the New Year audience of its emperor.[9] It says nothing of a New Year of the Göktürks themselves.

The first month at the Sui court

The first month was the time at which foreign envoys came to the Chinese court.[15] In 606 Yami Khan came to the Sui court. The emperor Yangdi gathered the variety performers of all quarters at the eastern capital to impress him.[16] From then on, the Sui Shu says, the performers were trained under the Court of Imperial Sacrifices.[16] Every year in the first month, the envoys of all states came to court. The court kept them until the fifteenth day.[16] A ground for the shows stretched for eight li outside the Duan gate. The officials set up stands along the road, and the shows went on from dusk to dawn until the end of the month.[16] The performers were dressed in brocade. Those who sang and danced, most of them in women’s clothes, numbered nearly thirty thousand.[16]

The Kirghiz year

The Xin Tang Shu’s notice on the Kirghiz describes their year.[3] They called the beginning of the year 茂師哀, maoshi’ai.[3] Three ai made one season.[3] They counted the years by twelve creatures, so that a year in the sign yin was the year of the tiger.[3]

Since three ai made a season, the ai was a month.[3] The same notice says that the script and language of the Kirghiz were the same as those of the Uyghurs.[3] In Kashgari’s dictionary, āy is the moon and also the month, because the moon shows the passing of the month.[17] The Chinese ai probably renders this Turkic āy. The notice does not say what maoshi meant.[3]

The tiger year of the Kirghiz fell on the year yin of the Chinese cycle. Their animal years therefore ran in step with the Chinese reckoning.[3] The same notice says that the Kirghiz worshipped only the spirits of water and grass. Their sacrifices had no fixed time, and they called their shamans gan.[3]

The months of the nomads in Kashgari

Mahmud al-Kashgari wrote his dictionary of the Turkic languages in Arabic between 1073 and 1077. Under the names of the years, he describes how the Turks divided the year.[18] He says that the Turks had no names for the seven days, because the week became known to them only with Islam.[4] In the cities, the months had Arabic names.[4] The nomads and the unbelievers named them after the four seasons. Each period of three months had its own name, and by these names the passing of the year was known.[4]

The beginning of spring, after Nayrūz, was called oγlāq ay, “the month of the kid”.[4] The next was uluγ oγlāq ay, “the month of the large kid”, because the second month is longer.[4] Then came uluγ ay, “the great month”. It falls in midsummer, when milk is abundant and all the blessings of livestock and of the earth appear.[4] Kashgari leaves out the other names because they were seldom used.[4] Nayrūz is the Persian New Year at the spring equinox. In Kashgari’s account, the year of the nomads therefore began in spring, with the month after it.[4] In the Altai of the nineteenth century, the months still bore the names of the hunter’s and herdsman’s year. January was the shameless month, because it sends so many frosts, though none of them great. April was the month of the chipmunk, which comes out of its hole. September was the month of hunting the maral. November was the old woman’s month, when the day is so short that an old woman scarcely has time to put on her boots.[19] In the nineteenth century, the Kirghiz of the Tarbagatai and the Altai counted the new year from the first thunder of the summer. They struck a ladle against the lattice of the yurt and said that the old year had gone out and the new year had come.[20]

The sources record when the year began and how envoys marked it at the Chinese courts. None of them describes a feast with which the steppe peoples themselves greeted the new year.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Shiji, juan 110
  2. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 272
  5. ^ a b c d Hou Han Shu, juan 89
  6. ^ a b c Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  7. ^ a b Kül Tegin inscription; Thomsen 1896, p. 119
  8. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  9. ^ a b c Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  10. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 193
  11. ^ Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 318
  12. ^ a b c d e f g Quan Tang wen, juan 999
  13. ^ Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 94
  14. ^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 94
  15. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 15; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  16. ^ a b c d e Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 15
  17. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 119
  18. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 271–272
  19. ^ Verbitskii 1893, scan 30
  20. ^ Potanin 1881, p. 92

Sources

Literature

  • Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī, Dīwān Lughat al-Turk (1072–1074)
  • Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
  • Vilhelm Thomsen, Inscriptions de l'Orkhon déchiffrées (1896)
  • Dong Gao 董誥 et al. (ed.), 全唐文 Quán Táng wén (1814)
  • Vasilii Ivanovich Verbitskii, Алтайские инородцы (Altai Foreigners) (1893)
  • Grigorii Nikolaevich Potanin, Очерки Северо-западной Монголии. Вып. 2. Материалы этнографические (Ocherki severo-zapadnoi Mongolii, Bd. 2) (1881)

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Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “The New Year on the Steppe.” Turkic Atlas, revised 7 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/customs/new-year/

Last revised: 7 November 2026