Abangbu

Abangbu is the first named figure in the second origin story of the Göktürks that the Zhou Shu records. According to that story, the ancestors of the Göktürks came from the state of Suo, which lay north of the Xiongnu.^[1] Abangbu was the chief of the tribe, and he had seventeen brothers.^[1] One of them, Yizhi Nishidu, had been born of a wolf.^[1] Abangbu and the others were foolish by nature, and so the state was destroyed.^[1]

His people outlived the state. People of Abangbu’s stock still lived on Mount Jiansi Chuzheshi, where Nishidu’s eldest son had settled. They suffered greatly from the cold and the dew.^[1] The eldest son made fire for them and kept them alive. They raised him as their lord under the name Türk, and he was Nadulu Shad.^[1]

The Tongdian repeats the opening of the story with the same seventeen brothers and the same folly.^[2] The Bei Shi gives seventy brothers. In the sentence on their folly it writes the name 阿謗卻, Abangque.^[3] Some scholars take the seventy for a slip of the text, since the other versions have seventeen.^[4]

The phrase that condemns the brothers, 性竝愚癡, is rendered as dull or foolish by nature.^[5]^[6] One translation instead has them born with limbs missing.^[4] The Chinese wording speaks of their nature, not of their bodies.

Abangbu’s part in the legend is to lose the state. The line of his wolf-born brother then rules his people.