Yizhi Nishidu

Yizhi Nishidu is the wolf-born ancestor in the second origin story of the Göktürks. The Zhou Shu sets this story in the state of Suo, north of the Xiongnu.^[1] He was one of the seventeen brothers of Abangbu, the chief of the tribe, and a wolf had borne him.^[1] Abangbu and the others were foolish by nature, and the state was destroyed.^[1]

Nishidu alone had been touched by a strange influence. He could summon wind and rain.^[1] He married two wives, who were said to be the daughters of the god of summer and the god of winter. From a single pregnancy four sons were born.^[1] One of them turned into a white swan. The second founded a state between the Afu and the Jian, and it was called Qigu, 契骨. The third founded a state on the Chuzhe. The fourth, the eldest, lived on Mount Jiansi Chuzheshi.^[1] Modern accounts understand the name Qigu as one of the Chinese spellings of the Kirghiz.^[2] The eldest saved the people of the mountain with fire. They raised him as their lord under the name Türk. He was Nadulu Shad, the father of Ashina.^[1]

The Bei Shi tells the same story with small differences of wording.^[3] Where the Zhou Shu writes 徵召, to summon, the Bei Shi writes 徵占, with the character for divining.^[3] The Tongdian keeps the wolf birth, the power over wind and rain and the two wives. It then passes from the four sons straight to the eldest.^[4] The compiler of the Zhou Shu closes the story with a remark. He says that this account differs, but that the Göktürks are in the end of wolf stock.^[1]

His power over wind and rain may be a familiar trait of Turkic and Mongolian shamans, who brought on rain and wind with stones.^[5] In the legend, Nishidu is the link between the wolf and the line that gave the Göktürks their name.