The Chinese histories record three acts of the Göktürk khans and their people that concern the forefathers: the yearly sacrifice at the cave of the forebears, offerings to the dead at the funeral, and the stones and painted house set up at the grave.[1] The inscriptions name the forefathers as the founders of the realm and as the source of its law. They mention no offering to them.[2] The Xiongnu before the Göktürks sacrificed to their ancestors at Longcheng.[3] The Altaians after them kept figures of named forefathers, the töz.[4]

THE FOREFATHERS IN THE RECORD Chinese accountsXiongnu to Göktürks: acts sacrifice to ancestors, Longchengthe cave of the forebears, yearlyfuneral offerings, stones, house InscriptionsGöktürk and Uyghur: words Bumin and Istemi as foundersthe law and land of the forefathersthe burial ground of the ancestors Later reportsUyghur to Altaian: images Uyghur temple images, 1253töz, the memorial of an ancestormountains called ancestors Only the first column describes acts; the second names the forefathers without an act. Modern diagram. The dashed box holds evidence read back from later centuries.
How the forefathers stand in the Chinese accounts, in the inscriptions and in later reports. Modern diagram.

Before the Göktürks

The Han Shu gives the Xiongnu a yearly calendar of assemblies. In the first month the chiefs met briefly at the court of the chanyu and sacrificed. In the fifth month they held a great assembly at Longcheng and sacrificed to their ancestors, to Heaven and Earth, and to ghosts and spirits.[3] The ancestors stand first in the list. One account counts the cult of ancestors and the beliefs about death among the most important elements of Xiongnu religion.[5]

Two episodes show what the ancestors could do. In 89 BC the mother of the chanyu fell ill. A Xiongnu shaman said that an earlier chanyu was angry. The Xiongnu had always sworn, when they went to war, to sacrifice the Han general Li Guangli, and he had not been sacrificed.[3] The general was seized and killed in sacrifice. Then rain and snow fell for months. The herds died, the people sickened and the crops failed. In fear, the chanyu built a shrine for the dead general.[3] The shaman gives the anger of the earlier chanyu as the reason for the illness. The text joins the weather to the killing only through the chanyu’s fear.[3] The second episode concerns graves. In 77 BC the Han learned from Xiongnu deserters that the Wuhuan had once opened the tombs of earlier chanyus. The Xiongnu resented it and were about to send twenty thousand horse against the Wuhuan.[3] Some scholars take the second episode, and the sacrifice of 89 BC, as evidence that the Xiongnu held the graves of their rulers so sacred that a violation was a cause of war.[6]

A passage that the Turkish literature takes from Chinese sources says that the Tuoba of the Northern Wei carved a stone in place of an ancestral temple. They sacrificed in a stone house to heaven, earth and the descent of their khan. Afterwards they planted birches, from which a sacred forest arose.[7]

The cave of the forebears

The Zhou Shu records that every year the khan led the nobles to sacrifice at the cave of the forebears, 先窟. It records that in the middle of the fifth month they gathered at a river to sacrifice to the spirit of heaven.[8] The Sui Shu has the western Göktürks send a high minister every year to make the offering at the cave where their forebears had lived.[9] It gives the western gathering as the eighth day of the fifth month. The Bei Shi has the fifth and the eighth months. The two texts therefore give the date in different words.[10]

The cave rite is the one act directed to the forefathers that the Chinese record for the khans. It is recorded as a yearly act. The place is not named. Where the cave lay is argued, as is whether it is the cave of the wolf in the origin story.[8] The offering is not described.[8] The rite belongs to the khan and the nobles. Its western form was kept up by proxy across the distance that separated the western court from the cave.[1]

The forefathers in the inscriptions

The Kül Tegin inscription begins with the forefathers. When the blue sky above and the brown earth below were made, between them the sons of men were made, and over the sons of men sat the forefathers Bumin Khan and İstemi Khan, who held and ordered the realm and the law of the Göktürks.[2] İltiriš Khan, the father of Bilge Khan and Kül Tegin, re-formed the people that had lost its khan according to the law of the forefathers.[2] Bilge Khan campaigned so that the land and water that the forefathers held should not be left without a master.[2] The forefathers are the founders, the source of the törü and the previous holders of the land. When the funeral of the founders is mentioned, the peoples from the sunrise are said to have come as mourners and wailers.[2]

The stones do not say that the forefathers were fed, called upon or asked for help. The address of the monument runs the other way. Bilge Khan tells the peoples down to the sons of the Ten Arrows to look at the stone and understand. He calls it the eternal stone.[2] The powers that act in the inscriptions are Heaven, Umay and the sacred Earth-and-Water.[11] In one rendering of the Bilge Khan inscription the spirit of the khan’s uncle withholds approval together with them. This would make a dead khan one of the powers. A second summary of the same passage names Heaven and the Earth-and-Water among the powers and does not decide.[12] A grammar of Old Turkic lists täŋri bol-, to become divine, among the Orkhon euphemisms for dying, with kergek bol-, to become necessary, and yok bol-.[13] The words the stones use of a dying khan are uça bar-, to fly away, and kergek bol-. They name no place where the dead arrive.[2]

The law of the forefathers

The Chinese record two occasions on which the forefathers serve as an authority. In 587 Ishbara Khan died. His brother Bagha, to whom the khan had left the throne, refused to take it from Ishbara’s son Yongyulü.[9] Bagha said that since Mukan Khan the Göktürks had often put a younger brother in the place of an elder and the son of a lesser wife in the place of the heir. They had therefore lost the law of the forefathers and no longer respected one another. Yongyulü answered that his dead father’s command could not be set aside. After five or six exchanges Bagha took the throne.[9] The succession shows the law of the forefathers named as the rule of descent and the command of a dead father named as binding on the living.

The second occasion is Chinese speech about the Göktürks. In the speech that the Xin Tang Shu gives the emperor Taizong, the Göktürks burned their dead by custom. Now they raised grave mounds against the orders of their fathers and grandfathers, and so insulted the spirits.[14] The remark may be an argument of the moment, in the manner of the classics, and not a report of a changed rite.[15] Both texts treat the practice of the forefathers as binding.

Funeral and grave

The funeral is the best-documented act. The Zhou Shu has the kin of the dead man kill sheep and horses and set them before the tent as a sacrifice, 祭. They ride seven times round the tent and cut their faces. On the day of the burial they offer again and repeat the riding and the face-cutting as at the first death.[8] At the grave a stone was set up and a marker, one stone for each man the dead man had killed. The heads of the sacrificed sheep and horses were hung on the marker.[8] The Sui Shu adds that a house was built at the grave and that the likeness of the dead man and the battles he had passed through were painted in it.[9] It says also that the Göktürks revered ghosts and spirits, trusted shamans, honoured those who died in battle and counted death from sickness a shame.[9] The burial and the balbal, the ride round the dead and the honour of death in battle hold the detail.

The accounts record offerings at the death and on the day of the burial. They do not record a later offering at the grave.[1] The statues of the memorial have been taken for a realistic representation of the dead, the ancestor, and tied to the carved stone figures of the steppe.[16] Balbal stones are called ancestors in Central Asian usage. Some of the later Turkish literature takes the tradition of the balbal as an expression of the cult of the ancestors, with graves, gravestones and tombs as the sacred places of that cult.[17]

The Tang court took part. When Kül Tegin died, the emperor sent envoys to condole and to offer, and to set up a stele. He had a shrine built in which a stone figure of the dead prince stood and the walls were painted with his battles.[18] The Xin Tang Shu adds that six master craftsmen were sent. They painted likenesses so true that Bilge Khan, looking at them, would choke with grief.[14] The Kül Tegin inscription says the same of the builders: the Chinese emperor sent his nephew and his craftsmen to build the tomb and cut the carving.[2] At the mourning for İstemi in 576, four prisoners were brought out in bonds among his horses. They were told to go to the dead khan and tell him how great something was. There Menander’s sentence breaks off.[19] The errand may be a message to the ancestor.[20] Following in death is treated for the companions who were killed at the death of a ruler.

The Uyghurs

The Tariat inscription of the khan Bayanchur says that in the year of the mouse, 748, the people gathered at the burial ground of the ancestors and named him khan.[21] The Turkish edition draws a line from this burial ground to the cave of the forebears in the Zhou Shu. It thinks that possession of the burial ground of the ancestors may have been among the signs of rule.[22]

The Karabalghasun inscription tells of the conversion of Bögü Khan to Manichaeism after 760.[23] In its Chinese face the governors and ministers repent their former errors. All carved and painted images of demons are to be burned and the teaching of light received.[24] A recent reading of the Sogdian face renders the Chinese demon images as idols made by hand. The Chinese face asks the people to stop praying to spirits.[25] What the images were is not said. Whether any of them were figures of ancestors is open. One scholar calls what the court gave up the religion of the forefathers. This names the inherited faith as a whole. It does not name a cult of the dead.[25]

The Old Uyghur Buddhist texts keep the native word for the departed soul, üzüt. One text tells the reader to give food to it.[26] A Franciscan traveller to the Mongols in 1253, in the Turkish account of his report, was told by an Uyghur priest in a Buddhist temple that the images in it were not images of the god.[27] If one of their people, a son or a wife, died, they made his likeness. They set it in the temple and kept it in memory of the dead.[27]

The Kirghiz and the Yenisei

The Tongdian says of the Kirghiz that they burned the dead, gathered the bones and made a grave after a year, building a house of wood and roofing it with bark.[28] The Xin Tang Shu has them walk three times round the body, weep, burn it, gather the bones and bury them after a year.[29] A Yenisei inscription of the Bay-Bulun stone records that the kinsmen of the dead man hunted with his men and held the funeral feast, yog. A hunt therefore belonged to the feast.[30]

Images of the ancestors

The Chinese histories of the Göktürks mention images. A Tang compilation is said to record that the Göktürks carved images in felt and kept them in bags of leather or felt. They greased them with fat, set them sometimes on poles and sacrificed to them at the four seasons. The text can also be read as four times of the day.[31] The identity of these images is understood in three ways. The first takes them for memorials of named ancestors, like the töz of the Altaians. The Altaians describe the töz in the words “this is my father’s töz, this is my mother’s töz”. A Mongol scholar argued that the cult of the ongon was bound up with that of the great ancestor and the dead.[32] The second takes them for images of gods, as the Chinese text says. It counts the debate on idol worship among the Turkic peoples as undecided.[33] The third holds that such images were a cult of the common people kept beside the cult of Tengri at court, which the nobles around Bilge Khan regarded as a memory of an earlier age.[34]

The later Altaian record names the figures. The töz are made of felt, rags and birch bark. Each is the memorial of a named ancestor, and some are made in the name of great shamans.[35] Abu’l-Ghazi, in the seventeenth century, said that men made likenesses of dead kin. They kept them in the house, set the first morsels of the meal before them and bowed to them. He said that idol worship began so.[27] The ancestors who protect the family and may also bring sickness, the körmös, belong to the layer of animism.

Interpretations of the cult

There are three interpretations of the cult. The first makes the ancestors one of three pillars of the old religion, beside Heaven and the sacred Earth-and-Water. It holds that Tengri embraces all three.[36] The second makes the cult of the ancestors the root from which other cults grow. On this view, the cult of the mountain comes from the union of mountain, cave and ancestors. The forest of Ötüken grew from trees planted after sacrifices to the ancestors. The cult of fire and hearth is bound to the ancestors, and the cult of images arises from the cult of the great ancestor and the dead.[37]

The third interpretation comes from what the stones and the histories give. The Chinese give the khan an offering at the cave and the people offerings at the grave. The inscriptions give the forefathers as founders and as the source of law and of the land. The sources show an order that rests on descent, with a duty to the dead at the grave and to the line at the cave. It shows no religion centred on the dead. A study of the nature cults of the Göktürks sets the ancestors, with the beliefs about death, the shamans and the wolf, apart for separate treatment. It ranks the nature cults below Tengri.[38]

Names

Eçüm apam is “my forefathers”, and eçümiz apamız “our forefathers”. Bumin and İstemi are the forefathers named.[2] Törü is the law and the custom that the forefathers set.[2] The Chinese write the cave of the forebears 先窟, the sacrifice to the ancestors 祭其先, and the law of the forefathers 先祖之法.[39] The Old Uyghur yagıš is the sacrifice and yagıšlıg orun the place of offering.[26] Töz is the Altaian word for root and origin and for the figure of an ancestor, and ongon is the Mongol word for it.[40] Ata kültü, the Turkish term, belongs to the literature of the twentieth century.[41]

Reliability of the sources

The Chinese give the Xiongnu a sacrifice to the ancestors at a fixed assembly and tombs that were held sacred. They give the Göktürks a yearly sacrifice at the cave, offerings at the death and a memorial at the grave.[42] The inscriptions put the forefathers into the order of rule and into the law. The offerings for the dead appear in the Chinese accounts alone. Scholars understand differently whether the old religion rested on the ancestors. The sources give the acts and the words without saying how the two joined.

References

  1. ^ a b c Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Kül Tegin inscription
  3. ^ a b c d e f Han Shu, juan 94
  4. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 42
  5. ^ Erkoç 2026, p. 240–241
  6. ^ Erkoç 2026, p. 244, 253
  7. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 3
  8. ^ a b c d e Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  9. ^ a b c d e Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  10. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99
  11. ^ Tonyukuk inscription; Kül Tegin inscription
  12. ^ Bilge Khan inscription; Uçar 2020, p. 38; 186; Erkoç 2024, p. 38; 186
  13. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 532
  14. ^ a b Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  15. ^ Ecsedy 1984, p. 276–277
  16. ^ Ecsedy 1984, p. 278–279
  17. ^ Çikolar 2026, p. 517; 524
  18. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  19. ^ Menander Protector
  20. ^ Ecsedy 1984, p. 266–267
  21. ^ Tariat inscription; Saadettin 1995, p. 73
  22. ^ Saadettin 1995, p. 80
  23. ^ Karabalghasun inscription
  24. ^ Karabalghasun inscription; Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, p. 287–288
  25. ^ a b Wilkens 2024, p. 78
  26. ^ a b Wilkens 2024, p. 82
  27. ^ a b c İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 43
  28. ^ Tongdian, juan 200
  29. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  30. ^ Tuncel 2023, p. 1130
  31. ^ 段成式 ca. 860, p. 193; Erkoç 2024, p. 193
  32. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 4–5, 42–43; 56; Şen 2018, p. 4–5, 42–43; 56
  33. ^ Erkoç 2024, p. 193
  34. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 5–6
  35. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 41–42
  36. ^ Şen 2018, p. 47; 25; 1436; Uçar 2020, p. 47; 25; 1436; Alsan 2024, p. 47; 25; 1436
  37. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 5, 43; 55; 190; Şen 2018, p. 5, 43; 55; 190; Erkoç 2024, p. 5, 43; 55; 190
  38. ^ Erkoç 2024, p. 176, 196
  39. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Han Shu, juan 94; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  40. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 42–44
  41. ^ Uçar 2020, p. 25
  42. ^ Han Shu, juan 94; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84

Sources

Literature

  • Hayrettin İhsan Erkoç, Asya Hunlarında Dinî İnançlar (Religious Beliefs of the Xiongnu) (2026)
  • Hayrettin İhsan Erkoç, Gök Türklerde Doğa Kültleri (2024)
  • Ali Ahmetbeyoğlu, Hüseyin Şen, Eski Türk Dininin Kozmolojisi ve Kozmogonisi (2018)
  • Hüseyin Uçar, Bir Kültün Özellikleri: Türklerde Su Kültü (2020)
  • Şenay Sayın Alsan, Gök Tanrı İnancının Türk İnanç Sisteminde Yeri ve Mimariye Yansımaları (2024)
  • Abdülkadir İnan, Tarihte ve Bugün Şamanizm: Materyaller ve Araştırmalar (2017; first edition 1954)
  • Ildikó Ecsedy, Ancient Turk (T'u-chüeh) Burial Customs (1984)
  • Eyüp Çikolar, Türk Ölüm Adetleri ve Balbal Taş Geleneğinin Şahideler Üzerindeki Manevi İzleri (2026)
  • Gömeç, Saadettin, Terhin Yazıtı'nın Tarihi Açıdan Değerlendirilmesi (1995)
  • Jens Wilkens (trans. Celalettin Bulut Bostan), Uygur Budizmi ve Manihaizm ile Yerel Dinlerin Etkisi: Dinî Terminoloji Örneği (2024)
  • Riza Tuncel, Eski Türk Avcılığının İnançsal ve Ritüelistik Boyutları (2023)
  • Wilhelm Radloff, Die alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei (1894–1895, parts 1–3)
  • Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
  • Uno Harva, Die religiösen Vorstellungen der altaischen Völker (1938)
  • Duan Chengshi 段成式, 酉陽雜俎 Yǒuyáng Zázǔ (ca. 860)

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Cite this article

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

Last revised: 8 November 2026