Water cult is the modern name for the reverence of rivers, lakes and springs as places of power and as the property of spirits that own them.[1] In the record of the Göktürks, water is almost never named alone. It stands in the pair Earth-and-Water, Iduk Yer-Sub, which speaks beside Tengri. It also stands in a few lines of Chinese and Greek that mention a river of sacrifice, spirits of water and grass, and a reverence for water.[2] The fuller picture comes from Persian and Arabic geographers of the tenth to twelfth centuries and from field reports of the Altai. All of them stand at a distance of centuries from the khaganates.

WHERE WATER STANDS IN THE RECORD Runiform stonesTonyukuk, Kül Tegin,Bilge Khan, Tariat Earth-and-Water speaks beside Heaven (Kül Tegin)Heaven, Umay and Earth-and-Water deliver the enemy (Tonyukuk)Tamag ıduk baş: a sacred head, a summit or a source Chinese and GreekZhou Shu, Xin Tang Shu,Theophylact A river of sacrifice to the spirit of heaven (Zhou Shu)The Kirghiz sacrifice only to water and grass (Xin Tang Shu)Fire, air and water revered, the earth praised (Theophylact) Later reportsTenth to twentiethcentury A river as the god of the Kimek; peoples who worship fire and watersOghuz who avoid washing (Ibn Fadlan, as summarised)A master of every river and lake (Altai and Yakut reports) Modern diagram. The dashed box holds evidence far later than the khaganates.
Where water is named in the record of the Göktürks and in later reports. Modern diagram: the upper two boxes hold the sources of the khaganates, the lower one the evidence read back from later centuries.

Sub and the pair yer sub

The Old Turkic word for water is sub in the Orkhon spelling and suv in the Old Uyghur texts and in Kashgari.[3] It rarely stands alone in the old texts. It is paired with yer, earth. The pair yer sub means a country or a holding, and with the epithet ıduk it means a sacred power.[4] A grammar of Old Turkic sets it among the pairs of complementary opposites. The grammar notes that the Mongol pair ǧajar usu has the same sacred sense in the Secret History.[5] By the time of the Old Uyghur Buddhist texts the pair is a plain word for the world. Its spiritual sense is gone.[6]

Water in the inscriptions

The Kül Tegin inscription places the pair at the turning point of its history of the fifty years under the Tang. China meant to kill the Göktürk people and leave them without seed. Then Heaven above and the sacred Earth-and-Water of the Göktürks said that the people must not perish and must be a people again. Heaven took İltiriš Khan and his katun by the crown of the head and raised them up.[7] Water is half of that pair. The sentence gives it no act of its own.[7] Elsewhere the same words serve a political claim. The land and water that the forefathers held must not be left without a master. To prevent this, Bilge Khan sets the Az and the Kirghiz in order.[7] A modern account reads the pair as one thing, land and water held together.[8] On a Yenisei grave stone, the same account says, the dead man cries: Ah, my land! I am parted from my water.[9]

The Tonyukuk inscription has the same pair at a river. Before the battle of Bolchu the army crossed the Altun forest, where there was no road. It crossed the Irtysh, where there was no ford, and marched by night.[10] A messenger reported a hundred thousand men on the plain, and the begs wished to turn back. Tonyukuk answered that the march had been hard, but that his men had hardly felt it, and that Heaven, Umay and the sacred Earth-and-Water had evidently helped them.[10][11] The passage names a forest, a river and the sacred pair side by side. It does not say that the river was crossed with a rite. It does not connect the Irtysh with the pair.[10] A modern account sets the crossings of the Irtysh side by side. The river is crossed in the Kül Tegin inscription before the fight with the Türgesh, in the Tonyukuk inscription, and in the Shine-Usu inscription, where it is crossed on a raft.[12]

The Bilge Khan inscription is said to use the pair for refusal. In one summary of the east face, Heaven and the sacred Earth-and-Water are among the powers that did not approve the betrayal by the Nine Oghuz. As a result, the Oghuz had to go to China. A Turkish translation of the same passage adds the spirit of the khan’s uncle to the powers that withheld approval.[13] The edition of Tekin gives the line itself: Heaven above, the sacred Earth-and-Water and the kut of the khan’s uncle did not approve, as it seems, and the Nine Oguz left their land and water and went to China.[14] On that evidence the pair punishes as well as saves.

On one occasion the inscriptions use water as a plain image. Of the people who left Ötüken, the Kül Tegin stone says that their blood ran like water and their bones lay like mountains.[7] Water and mountain stand there as the two things to which a destroyed people is compared. The line gives neither of them a power.

The sacred head of Tamag

The sacred places named in the inscriptions include a head. The Karluk, who had risen against the Göktürks, were fought at tamag ıduk baş. The Kül Tegin stone names a second battle, in the year 701, at a place it calls ıduk baş.[15] The word baş means head. It is unclear what kind of head is meant. It may be the summit of a mountain or the source of a stream, and some translators leave the choice open. As a result, translations of the name run from the sacred peak of Tamag to the sacred spring of Tamag.[16] Several scholars place the Tamag head at or near the sources of the Tamir, a river of Mongolia. Another places it west of the Altai in Dzungaria.[16] The head of 701 may be the same place as Tamag. Against this, that battle has been sited in the northeast of Gansu and the south of the Ordos, and a third proposal puts it near Sogdiana.[17] The same words stand in the Tariat inscription of the Uyghur khan Bayanchur. In the Turkish edition, he had his camp set up west of the sacred summit of Süngüz Başkan, süngüz başkan ıduk baş.[18]

Three or four places bear the name. The texts do not decide whether ıduk baş is a kind of place or a single name, or whether it is mountain or spring. A head that is a source belongs with the waters, and a head that is a summit with the mountains.

The Chinese accounts

The Zhou Shu gives the one rite the Chinese connect with a river. In the middle ten days of the fifth month the Göktürks gathered at the water the Chinese write 他人水 and sacrificed to the spirit of heaven.[19] The Sui Shu gives the offering as many sheep and horses killed in the middle of the fifth month. It names no river.[20] The sacrifice is to Heaven, and the river is where it was made.[19] One translation renders the name of the Taren as the Tamir. The Turkish literature adds that it has not been settled whether the place was a river, a lake, a spring or a mountain.[21] The choice of a riverside for a rite to Heaven may belong beside the other nature cults: the mountain called the spirit of the earth and the sacred heads of the inscriptions. Together they would form one family of practice.[22] If the Taren is the Tamir, the Turks gathered on its bank in the second ten days of the fifth month to sacrifice to Heaven.[23]

The Xin Tang Shu has a sentence on water that stands closer to the cult. Of the Kirghiz it says that in worshipping the spirits they served only those of water and grass. They kept no fixed time for the sacrifice. They called their shamans 甘, gan.[24] The sentence is a Chinese summary of Kirghiz custom. It does not say what was offered or at which water.[24]

A ninth-century Chinese collection tells a story of the Göktürks and a lake. West of the cave of the Ashide there was a lake with a god. The lake goddess, or the god’s daughter, met the ancestor Shemo each evening and took him into the water. The bond ended when he failed in a task she had set.[25] The story belongs to Turkic mythology. It shows a lake with a will and a household of its own.

Water also appears in the power over weather that the sources give to wonder-workers. In the Zhou Shu the wolf-born Nishidu could summon wind and rain. He married the daughters of the gods of summer and winter.[19] The Yueban, a people allied with the Northern Wei, are said in the Wei Shu to have had sorcerers who brought rain, wind, snow and floods against the Rouran.[26] The power of Nishidu may be linked to the later belief in the rain stone. The Turkic god is said to have given this stone to the great ancestor, and commanders or shamans are said to have held it.[27] The sources of the khaganates do not mention the stone.[19]

Theophylact and Menander

The Greek source with the clearest sentence is Theophylact Simocatta. In the digression on the east in book seven he says that the Göktürks honour fire to a quite extraordinary degree. They revere air and water and praise the earth. They worship and call god, however, only him who made the heaven and the earth.[28] The sentence separates one maker, who is worshipped, from the elements, which are honoured. It may also follow a literary pattern in which a barbarian people has one creator god. The agreement with the inscriptions may owe something to that pattern.

Menander records an oath of the Avar khagan Baian that names water beside heaven. At the Sava, where Baian was building a bridge, the Roman officers at Singidunum asked him to swear that he meant no harm to Rome. He drew his sword and swore. If he built the bridge against Rome, he and the whole Avar people should be destroyed by the sword. Heaven and God in the heavens should send fire against them. The mountains and the forests should fall upon them. The river Sava should overflow and drown them.[29] The Avars are a steppe people of disputed origin, and the oath was sworn on the Sava. It shows a steppe khan calling on heaven, mountain, forest and river together as the powers that punish a broken oath.

The Irk Bitig

The Irk Bitig, a book of omens copied at Dunhuang in the tenth century, names water in two omens. In the seventeenth a favourite horse stands exhausted in a desert. By the strength Heaven gives it, the horse sees a way and water on a mountain and fresh grass on the mountain pasture. It walks there, drinks and eats and escapes death. The omen is good.[30] In the forty-fifth a deer calf asks how it can live without water and grass. The omen is bad.[31] In both, water is a condition of life and the gift of Heaven’s strength. It is not asked for, offered to or addressed. A Turkish study reads the first omen as a sign of the saving role of water in the cult.[32]

Reports of the tenth to twelfth centuries

Persian and Arabic writers of the tenth to twelfth centuries report reverence of water among peoples of the western steppe. These sources are late. They bear on the Göktürks only if the peoples they describe are taken as neighbours or heirs of the khaganates.

The geographer Marvazi, writing about 1120, has three peoples to the right of the Kimek. They worship fire and waters, trade with strangers by signs and fast one day in the year.[33] His editor remarks that the worship of waters may reflect the influence of the western neighbours of those peoples. The editor adds that according to Gardizi the Kimek worshipped the Irtysh and said that the river was the god of the Kimek.[34] Marvazi and Gardizi draw on one lost geography. The two notices therefore count as one witness.[35]

Two Turkish studies summarise Ibn Fadlan, who crossed the Oghuz country in 922. According to them, he says that the Oghuz did not wash after relieving themselves. They were angry at a man who washed, took him for a sorcerer who looked into the water to work magic, and demanded a fine.[36] A history of the Oghuz gives the same report from the same traveller and holds that, by a deep-rooted belief of all the Turks, water is sacred and pure.[37][38] There are three explanations for this behaviour. The first is reverence and fear of the powers in the water. The second is a rule against fouling the water, which kept it usable and spared people and herds epidemics. The third doubts the report and sets it down to the exaggeration of a traveller.[39] The same studies add, again from the Arabic and Persian writers, a lake at an Uyghur town that the country people walked round once a year, as reported by Tamim ibn Bahr. They also add a Chinese envoy’s account of a water game among the Uyghurs of Turfan that some take to be a rain charm.[40]

Later reports from the Altai

The reports of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries give water a master. Among the Karagass the master of the water is sug äzi and among the Yakuts ü icci. Every river and lake is said to have its own.[41] Fishermen tie ribbons to a birch and throw tea, milk and fat into a fire, but not bread or tobacco. Nothing foul may go into the water.[41] The Teleut say that from ancient times they have honoured their land and water, jär-su, and the sky. A collector among the Altaians took jär-su for a company of khans who live on the snow peaks at the sources of the rivers, among them the Altai Khan at the sources of the Katun.[42] When the Bashkirs bathed in a lake or river, they tore a scrap from their clothes and threw it in. They led a new bride to the river with the words “water left by the fathers, water left by the mothers”.[43] In the Altaian creation story as the Turkish literature gives it from Radloff’s recording, the god and the first man fly over the primeval waters, and the man dives for a handful of earth.[44] Whether such beliefs reach back to the khaganates is the question of the historiography of Tengrism. The reports describe the Altai of the nineteenth century. Between them and the Orkhon lie more than a thousand years.

Interpretations of the cult

There are four interpretations of the cult. The first holds that water, like the mountain and the land, was honoured for the spirits or the hidden powers in it and was not worshipped as water.[45] The second, older view is that the natural beings themselves were the objects of cult.[46] The third takes yer sub in the inscriptions to mean the homeland alone, without a sacred sense.[47] The fourth ranks the spirits of earth, water and mountain below Tengri, since they help and punish and have no power to create.[48]

Each interpretation fits what the stones say, because the stones say little. They give a pair, a crossing and a refusal of approval. What is firm is the place of water in the order of the sources. It is a power that speaks with Heaven and is named with the land. The texts describe no rite for it.[49]

Names

Sub is the Orkhon form. The Old Uyghur suv and the later su follow. The Altaian dialects are said to have sug.[50] Yer sub is a binome, and ıduk yer sub the same with the epithet ıduk.[5] Kashgari glosses ıduk as blessed, and as an animal set free by a vow that lies on its owner.[51] The owner of a water is iye, in the Altaian dialects, and icci among the Yakuts. The Old Turkic ancestor of the word is idi, master.[52] Su kültü, the Turkish term, belongs to the literature of the twentieth century and not to any source.[53]

Evidence for the Göktürks

For the Göktürks the evidence for water is short and exact. Water is half of the pair that speaks beside Heaven, it is the place where the sacrifice to Heaven was made, and it is one of the elements that Theophylact says the Göktürks revered.[54] A rite to water as water is not described. The lake goddess, the master of the water and the river as the god of the Kimek come from later or distant tellers. The cult of water in the sense of the Turkish literature is a reconstruction from many peoples and many centuries. The Göktürk sources fit into it without proving it.

References

  1. ^ Uçar 2020, p. 24–25,30
  2. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217; Theophylact Simocatta
  3. ^ Wilkens 2024, p. 82–83; 27–28; Uçar 2020, p. 82–83; 27–28
  4. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 533; 31; Uçar 2020, p. 533; 31
  5. ^ a b Erdal 2004, p. 533
  6. ^ Wilkens 2024, p. 82–83
  7. ^ a b c d Kül Tegin inscription
  8. ^ Ögel 1995, p. 322–325
  9. ^ Ögel 1995, p. 323–324
  10. ^ a b c Tonyukuk inscription
  11. ^ Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1994, p. 17, 45–46
  12. ^ Ögel 1995, p. 368–369
  13. ^ Bilge Khan inscription; Erkoç 2024, p. 186; 38; Uçar 2020, p. 186; 38
  14. ^ Bilge Khan inscription; Tekin o. J., p. 74–75
  15. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Erkoç 2024, p. 187
  16. ^ a b Erkoç 2024, p. 187–188
  17. ^ Erkoç 2024, p. 188
  18. ^ Tariat inscription; Saadettin 1995, p. 73
  19. ^ a b c d Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  20. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  21. ^ Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 23; 28; Uçar 2020, p. 23; 28
  22. ^ Erkoç 2024, p. 189
  23. ^ Roux 1994, p. 125
  24. ^ a b Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  25. ^ 段成式 ca. 860, p. 183–184; Erkoç 2024, p. 183–184
  26. ^ Wei Shu, juan 102; Erkoç 2026, p. 247
  27. ^ Erkoç 2024, p. 193; 39; Uçar 2020, p. 193; 39
  28. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 191
  29. ^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, p. 221
  30. ^ Irk Bitig; Tekin 1993, p. 13
  31. ^ Irk Bitig; Tekin 1993, p. 21
  32. ^ Uçar 2020, p. 33
  33. ^ al-Marwazī early 12th c., p. 32; Minorsky 1942, p. 32
  34. ^ Gardīzī ca. 1050, p. 108; Minorsky 1942, p. 108
  35. ^ Minorsky 1942, p. 6,106
  36. ^ Uçar 2020, p. 29; 53; Şen 2018, p. 29; 53
  37. ^ Ibn Fadlan
  38. ^ Sümer 1972, p. 44–45
  39. ^ Uçar 2020, p. 29–30; 56; Şen 2018, p. 29–30; 56
  40. ^ Uçar 2020, p. 28–29
  41. ^ a b Harva 1938, p. 401
  42. ^ Harva 1938, p. 245; 7; Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 245; 7
  43. ^ Uçar 2020, p. 30
  44. ^ Uçar 2020, p. 34
  45. ^ Erkoç 2024, p. 179; 30–31; 56; Uçar 2020, p. 179; 30–31; 56; Şen 2018, p. 179; 30–31; 56
  46. ^ Erkoç 2024, p. 179
  47. ^ Erkoç 2024, p. 185
  48. ^ Erkoç 2024, p. 196
  49. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tonyukuk inscription
  50. ^ Uçar 2020, p. 27–28
  51. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 107
  52. ^ Harva 1938, p. 386–387; 18,122; Erdal 2004, p. 386–387; 18,122
  53. ^ Uçar 2020, p. 24
  54. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Theophylact Simocatta

Sources

Literature

  • Hüseyin Uçar, Bir Kültün Özellikleri: Türklerde Su Kültü (2020)
  • Hayrettin İhsan Erkoç, Gök Türklerde Doğa Kültleri (2024)
  • Ali Ahmetbeyoğlu, Hüseyin Şen, Eski Türk Dininin Kozmolojisi ve Kozmogonisi (2018)
  • Hayrettin İhsan Erkoç, Asya Hunlarında Dinî İnançlar (Religious Beliefs of the Xiongnu) (2026)
  • Abdülkadir İnan, Tarihte ve Bugün Şamanizm: Materyaller ve Araştırmalar (2017; first edition 1954)
  • Uno Harva, Die religiösen Vorstellungen der altaischen Völker (1938)
  • V. Minorsky, Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir Marvazī on China, the Turks and India (1942)
  • Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (trans.), The History of Theophylact Simocatta (1986)
  • R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
  • Talat Tekin, Irk Bitig: The Book of Omens (1993)
  • Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
  • Jens Wilkens (trans. Celalettin Bulut Bostan), Uygur Budizmi ve Manihaizm ile Yerel Dinlerin Etkisi: Dinî Terminoloji Örneği (2024)
  • Wilhelm Radloff, Aus Sibirien. Lose Blätter aus meinem Tagebuche. Zweiter Band (1893 (zweite Ausgabe))
  • Marie Antoinette Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology (1914)
  • Gömeç, Saadettin, Terhin Yazıtı'nın Tarihi Açıdan Değerlendirilmesi (1995)
  • Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
  • Duan Chengshi 段成式, 酉陽雜俎 Yǒuyáng Zázǔ (ca. 860)
  • Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir al-Marwazī, طبائع الحيوان Ṭabāʾiʿ al-Ḥayawān (early 12th c.)
  • Gardīzī, زين الأخبار Zayn al-Akhbār (ca. 1050)
  • Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī, Dīwān Lughat al-Turk (1072–1074)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Mitolojisi (Kaynakları ve açıklamaları ile destanlar) II (1995)
  • Jean-Paul Roux, Türklerin ve Moğolların Eski Dini (1994)
  • Faruk Sümer, Oğuzlar (Türkmenler). Tarihleri, boy teşkilâtı, destanları (1972)
  • Talât Tekin, Orhon Yazıtları. Kül Tigin, Bilge Kağan, Tunyukuk (o. J.)
  • Talât Tekin, Tunyukuk Yazıtı (1994)

Related

What links here3

Religions
Alara · Iye · Sacred Mountains

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Water Cult.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/religions/water-cult/

Last revised: 8 November 2026