The Chinese histories of the Göktürks name the horse as a victim on three occasions: at the sacrifice to heaven, at a funeral and at the swearing of an oath.[1] They say what was killed and when, and they do not say how.[1] The manner of the killing is known from one place and one time. In the Altai of the nineteenth century, a missionary and an ethnologist wrote down the sacrifice of a light-coloured horse to Ülgen, the good god of the Altaians. Their records run from the choice of the animal to the laying of its bones on a platform.[2]

More than a thousand years lie between the two records, and no text joins them.

Sheep and horses at the sacrifice to heaven

The Sui Shu puts it in one line: in the middle of the fifth month the Göktürks killed many sheep and horses and sacrificed them to heaven, 五月中，多殺羊馬以祭天.[3] The Zhou Shu gives the same season and the same god without a victim. In the middle of the fifth month the Göktürks gathered at a river and sacrificed to the spirit of heaven.[4] Of the occasions of the Göktürk ritual year, only the victim matters here.

A Greek report names the victims in the same way. Theophylact Simocatta says that the Göktürks honoured fire, revered air and water and praised the earth. They worshipped and called god only him who had made heaven and earth.[5] To him, Theophylact says, they sacrificed horses, cattle and sheep. They had priests who, in their own view, also foretold the future.[5] The translator identifies the god as Tengri.[6] Horses stand first in Theophylact’s list, and the Sui Shu names them with the sheep.[7]

Neither author says how a horse was killed, who killed it, or whether a priest took part.[8] The Orkhon inscriptions are no help either. The Kül Tegin inscription names the horses of its hero. It records that three were killed under him in one charge when he was twenty-one.[9] It records no horse given to a god.[9]

The horse at the funeral

The Zhou Shu describes the funeral in order.[4] The body lay in a tent. The sons, grandsons and kin of both sexes each killed sheep and horses and set them before the tent as an offering, 各殺羊馬，陳於帳前，祭之.[4] They rode seven times round the tent and cut their faces at its door.[4] On a chosen day the horse the dead man had ridden and the things he had worn and used were burnt with the body. The ashes were kept until the burial.[4] After the burial a stone was set up at the grave with a marker, and the heads of the sheep and horses that had been offered were hung on the marker.[4]

The Sui Shu agrees in outline and differs in one point.[3] In its account the kin kill oxen and horses, not sheep and horses, and the body is set on a horse and burnt.[3] The two texts agree that the horse is both victim and mount. A part of the herd is killed for the mourning, and one horse goes to the fire with the dead man. The rest of the funeral belongs to burial and the balbal and riding round the dead. These articles treat the stones, the balbal and the circuits round the tent.

Excavation gives a second picture. At Berel in the Altai, the graves of the Göktürk period are inhumations in stone cists or in the bare ground. The dead man lies on his back with his head to the east and a harnessed stallion beside or above him.[10] The texts speak of burning, and the graves show burial. The sources do not decide between them.

The white horse of an oath

In two reports a horse is killed to seal a covenant. In 626 the Göktürk Ilig came with more than a hundred thousand horsemen to the Wei river before Chang’an.[11] The new Tang emperor spoke with him across the water, and peace was asked for and granted.[11] Then the emperor went out west of the city, and a white horse was killed. The oath was sworn on the Bian bridge, 刑白馬與頡利同盟於便橋之上.[11] The same words stand in the Han Shu for an oath that falls in about 43 BC.[12] Two Han officers climbed the hill east of the river Nuo with the Xiongnu chanyu and his great men and killed a white horse. All drank the blood oath from the cup that had been made of a Yuezhi king’s head.[13]

Chinese envoys or the emperor himself stood at both oaths. The histories do not say whose rite the white horse was.[14]

The Xiongnu and the Gaoche

The sources on the earlier steppe peoples name occasions and mostly leave the victim out.[15] The Shiji says that in the fifth month the Xiongnu held a great assembly at Longcheng. There they sacrificed to their ancestors, to heaven and earth and to ghosts and spirits.[16] The Hou Han Shu gives the Southern Xiongnu three yearly sacrifices to the spirit of heaven, on the wu day of the first, the fifth and the ninth month. After the sacrifices the tribes met in council and ran horses and camels for pleasure.[17] Neither text names an animal killed.[15]

The Gaoche, the “high carts” whom the later histories call the Tiele, used horses in the three sacrificial rites that the Wei Shu describes. In none of the three is a horse named as the victim.[18] At the great sacrifice to Heaven under the emperor Wencheng, they raced horses and killed victims, 走馬殺牲.[18] At the thunder rite, they buried a ram and rode round the place a hundred times.[18] In the thanksgiving after a death by thunder or a pestilence, they killed many animals of every kind, burned the bones and rode round in circles.[18] The horse of the Gaoche runs in circles. The animal that dies is a ram or an unnamed beast.

The Greek record of the earlier steppe

Two later studies report a horse sacrifice in Herodotus. One handbook of Turkic history says that he mentions horse sacrifices among the Scythians, performed by impalement. The handbook compares them with the horse sacrifice that the Altaian peoples still performed in the nineteenth century.[19] A Turkish study of the sky cult adds the Massagetai. Their only god, Herodotus says, was the sun, and to the sun they sacrificed horses, the swiftest of animals to the swiftest of gods.[20] Both studies give Herodotus at second hand. They pose the question whether the Scythian or Massagetan rite has any link with the Turkic one, and they do not settle it.[21]

The sacrifice to Ülgen in the Altai

The sources

The fullest description of a horse sacrifice comes from the Altai of the nineteenth century. Radloff gives it in the second volume of Aus Sibirien as the sacrifice to Ülgön, as he writes the name, the good god of the Altaians.[22] He says where the description comes from.[23] The Altaian mission had recorded the shamans’ prayers since the early 1840s. In 1861 it refused to let him see them.[23] In 1870 the missionary Verbitskii printed them in the Tomsk newspaper, in the original language and without a translation. The text was so corrupt that in many places no sense could be made of it.[24] Radloff took that text as his guide. He described the ceremony and translated the prayers as far as the text allowed.[25] Verbitskii’s own book of 1893 gives the ceremony again, with the prayers in the original and a Russian account.[26]

Both writers were outsiders to the rite. Verbitskii was a missionary, and he adds a remark about the shaman. The shaman, he writes, is a poor man who naturally prefers fat horse meat from his neighbour’s herd to meal and thin broth.[27] The text is a good account of what the Altaians did in the nineteenth century. It is not a Göktürk text.

Choice of horse and site

Ülgen was sacrificed to rarely, Verbitskii says, because he is good without it.[28] Every adult, however, owed him a horse of light colour on entering marriage.[28] The horse was called iik, and Ülgen was said to love bay horses most.[28] A horse promised to Ülgen was honoured. A red ribbon was tied to its mane, and no woman might sit on it.[28] The sacrifice was made in spring, in a grove of birches.[28]

Only men took part, and the shaman had to be a man.[29] Girls could eat the meat at the place of sacrifice. Married women had to keep away, fifty sazhens, about a hundred metres, according to Verbitskii.[30] A sacrifice to Erlik was different. It was made at the place of the misfortune, in the yurt itself or at the grave.[23]

For the ceremony, a new yurt was set up in the grove, covered with felts and rugs, its door to the east.[31] In the middle stood a young birch with its green crown through the smoke hole.[25] The lower branches were cut off, and a strip of cloth was tied to the top like a flag. Nine deep notches, steps, tapty, were cut into the trunk.[25] Before the door stood a small fence of birch bark and sticks, a pen for the herd. In its opening stood a staff with a noose of horsehair.[25]

The kam tested the horse. He set a bowl on its back and gave the animal a blow so that it sprang aside and the bowl fell.[25] A bowl lying with its bottom up showed that the horse would not do.[32] A mare was tested with a bowl washed in her own milk and with a spell that asks the god to look with his right eye on what is offered.[33] The kam then had a man chosen to hold the horse by a long halter of horsehair, the bash-tutkan, the head-holder.[32] The kam waved a birch twig over the horse’s back and so drove its soul out toward Ülgen. The soul of the head-holder went with it.[32]

Calling the spirits and catching the soul

Then the kam burned juniper, warmed his drum and called his helper spirits one after another.[33] Each answered “ä kam ai” and was taken into the drum with a movement of the arm.[34] Among those called were Ülgen’s sons Kergidäi and Kan Kartysch, and Kysügan Tengrä and Mergän Kan.[35] The kam went out to a goose of hay covered with rags, sat on it and beat his arms like wings.[36] He sang to it: beneath the white sky and above the white cloud, climb, bird.[37] The goose answered through the kam’s own mouth, and the two spoke of the milk lake and of the Süro mountain.[38]

The soul of the horse, pura, now began to neigh and ran.[39] The kam chased it on his goose. The people at the door joined the hunt with shouts until the soul was driven into the pen.[39] There he threw the drum over his left shoulder and caught the horsehair noose with his left hand, and so caught the soul.[40] A man standing by caught the drum in the air.[40] If the drum fell to the ground, the soul had broken loose, and the catching began again.[41] Once the soul was caught, the kam gave it into the keeping of its guardian. He saddled it in words with a golden saddle, smoked it with juniper and let the goose go with a blessing.[40] Only then was the visible horse led to the lonely place.[42] The kam spoke to it a blessing: climb to the ninth layer, fall down at the white tent of Ülgen, come to Bai Ülgen, stand at his right hand and bring a good judgment.[42]

The killing

The place of sacrifice, the taskak, was a frame of four birch posts set in a square.[43] The horse was laid with its head to the east and its muzzle tied.[42] A rope was fixed to each foot, and a thick pole was laid along the back.[42] The ropes were drawn over the pole so that the hind legs were pulled back and the forelegs forward. The spine was broken in several places, and the legs were wrenched from their sockets.[44] Every opening of the body was stopped with grass so that no blood ran.[45] Radloff calls the killing a horrible torture.[42] While the horse struggled, Verbitskii says, the kam held a loaf up to it and spoke words that mean: I shall catch the good fortune, or the strength that leaves with the life, for increase.[46] The host ate the loaf himself and gave it to no one outside his family.[46]

The skin was taken off whole, with the skull and the legs to the knees left in it, and the tongue was torn out.[47] The hide, the baidara, was fixed to a long pole whose upper end lay in a forked post. It hung above the platform with its head to the east.[47] Verbitskii names the east as the side of Ülgen and the west as the side of Erlik.[46] Among the Teleut, Radloff saw the hide set upright on the platform.[45]

Meat and bones

The body was cut up at the joints without breaking a bone. The meat was boiled in large kettles, in water, with nothing added.[48] Two chosen cooks had the honour of stirring the kettles.[45] A cook poured broth into a bowl and, with his face to the east, offered it to the ancestors and to the protecting spirits of the yurt. He did so first in the kam’s own name and then in the name of the host.[49] The last words of the blessing called on Kaira Kan.[49] The bowl was then thrown up over the pole. If it fell with its bottom down, the sacrifice was accepted. If it lay the other way, Ülgen took no pleasure in it.[50] The host gave the best part, the hindquarter, to the kam, and the meat went round the guests in a fixed order.[51] Messengers carried portions to absent kin and put the meat into their mouths with their hands.[52] The bones were gathered on birch twigs, lifted on to the platform and covered with twigs and leaves.[52] They stayed there as the god’s own. It would bring great misfortune if one of them, even the smallest, were missing.[52]

The second evening

The great invocation came on the second evening.[53] The kam fed the “lords of the drum”, the personified power of his clan, and the fire with the meat of the day before.[54] The host hung nine garments of cotton, cloth and silk on a cord before the yurt as gifts to Ülgen, gifts that no horse can carry.[55] Then the kam put on his coat, seated himself at the fire and called the spirits of the upper world one by one, to have them help on the journey.[56] He asked the door-keeper for leave and bowed three times to him.[57] He cleansed the host and his family with the drum and drove the evil from the yurt.[58]

The ascent through the heavens

The journey itself followed.[59] The kam set his foot on the lowest notch of the birch and struck the drum on the ground to show that he had broken through the floor of the first heaven. He ran round the birch and the fire, and he imitated thunder and lightning.[60] He sat on a stool covered with a saddle cloth, which stood for the soul of the horse, and spoke to it.[60] In the third heaven the horse tired.[61] The kam left it to the head-holder, called the goose and rode on the goose.[62]

THE NINE NOTCHES OF THE BIRCH 123456789 first and second: foot on the notch, the drum struck on the floor,"I have broken through"; thunder and lightning acted third: the horse tires and stays behind; the kam rides the goose;the milk lake and the Süro mountain fourth: the black eagle hunts the cuckoo fifth: Jajutschi, the highest creator, questions the kam sixth: the Moon, "Father" seventh: the Sun, "Mother" eighth and ninth: the same acts; in the song Ülgen's white tent stands in the ninth beyond the ninth: the strongest kams climb to the tenth, eleventh and twelfth;at the highest point reached the kam calls on Ülgen Every label comes from the nineteenth-century description.
The ascent as Radloff describes it: nine notches cut in the birch, each a layer of heaven, and the figures the kam meets on the way up. Modern diagram; the labels come from the Altaian record of the nineteenth century, not from the Göktürk sources.

At each stage the kam told the listeners what he saw, and he acted the scenes himself.[63] In the fourth heaven he showed a black eagle hunting a cuckoo.[64] In the fifth he met Jajutschi, the highest creator, who questioned him about his descent. In the kam’s report, Jajutschi then foretold the lives of the host’s three sons.[65] In the sixth he greeted the Moon as Father and in the seventh the Sun as Mother.[66] He climbed on through the eighth and ninth heavens.[67] The stronger a kam, the higher he went, to the tenth, eleventh and twelfth, but few had the strength.[67] Where he could climb no further, he called on Ülgen himself. From Ülgen he learned whether the sacrifice was accepted, how the weather and the harvest would turn out and whether another sacrifice was wanted.[68] Verbitskii has the kam go up through the eighth to the twelfth heavens in the same way. Among what Ülgen tells the gathering, he lists the gathering of nuts, the grain harvest and the catch of game.[27]

After the talk with Ülgen, the kam fell into the highest ecstasy and sank down exhausted.[69] The head-holder took the drum from his hands. The kam woke, rubbed his eyes, wrung the sweat from his shirt and greeted the company with the words “Esän-salam”.[70] The third evening was given to libations and a great drinking. Huge skins of kumys and milk brandy and, among the northern shamanists, much barley beer were emptied.[69] Drunkenness was not counted a disgrace, Radloff says. The women kept measure and covered the men who had dropped senseless.[71]

Other horse offerings in the Altai

The sacrifice to Ülgen is the largest, and the Altaian peoples offered horses in other forms too. A synthesis of the Altaian material reports that they held horse sacrifices to be worth more than any other, and that none could be made without a vow.[72] The vow could be given in a substitute: hair plucked from the mane, or the tail of the horse.[73] Where a horse was killed, its skin might be set up stuffed on a slanting pole so that it looked like a living horse.[72] Living horses were dedicated as well.[73] A red cloth on the mane or the ears marked such an animal among the Tungus, and a red ribbon among the Altaians.[74]

Horses in the Altai texts

Runiform texts of the Altai mention horses in a few places.[75] Their dates are not settled.[76] Three readers have read the single line of Kurgak I, and no two agree.[77] A phrase of it may be a call to kill the dead man’s horse.[77] Another takes the line for the text of a funeral sacrifice, because it contains the words “we ate” and “sacrificial animal”.[78] On the Jabogan stone, line 1 puts the dead man in heaven and his stallion on earth, with one voice and one soul between them, according to one reader.[79] The reader supports this with the unity of hero and horse in the epics, with a later custom of cutting the tail of the dead man’s horse and not riding it again, and with the stallions of the Pazyryk graves.[75] Line 3 names horses by colour, with saddles of different metals.[80] No text joins these lines to the horse sacrifices that the Chinese histories report.

Projecting the Altaian rite back

The Altaian account is detailed. It rests on a missionary’s text of the prayers and on Radloff’s own observation among the Teleut, and it dates from the nineteenth century.[81] Projecting it back onto the khaganates takes a step for which no source supplies a ground. The societies it describes were small, forest-dwelling and stateless. The Chinese accounts, by contrast, describe the funerals and sacrifices of a state.

Three things can be said. First, the victims agree where the sources overlap: horses, sheep and cattle in the Chinese and Greek accounts, a horse in the Altaian rite. Second, the occasions differ. The Altaian horse is offered to a named god at a rite of the household. The Chinese horses are killed at a feast, a funeral and a covenant of a polity. Third, the manner of killing is attested for the Altai alone, and what the Altaians did to the horse cannot be assumed for the Göktürks.

The journey through the heavens may be a later addition to the sacrifice. The rites for the spirits of the dead have a journey of their own, and the offerings that follow them take other forms than those for the sky god.[82] The Altaian horse sacrifice would then be older than the shamanic ascent. Radloff and Verbitskii, for their part, give the ascent as a part of the sacrifice.[83] Nothing in the Chinese or Greek records decides between the two.

The Göktürk record fixes only the minimum: a horse was killed for heaven, for the dead and for an oath.[1] No source of the khaganates gives the manner of the death.[84]

Terms

The Altaian words belong to the nineteenth-century sources. Radloff calls the sacrifice tailga, and Verbitskii calls the horse owed to Ülgen iik.[85] The man who holds the horse is the bash-tutkan, the head-holder.[33] The soul of the sacrificed horse is the pura. The platform on which the carcass is laid is the taskak. The hide on its pole is the baidara, and the notches of the birch are the tapty.[86] The Chinese and Greek accounts name the victims in Chinese and Greek and contain none of these words.

Reliability

For the Göktürks the evidence is short and clear. It names the horse as a victim at the sacrifice to heaven, at the funeral and at the oath. It comes from Chinese and Greek writers outside the steppe, who record the victim and not the act.[87] For the Altai the evidence is full, and it belongs to the nineteenth century. The two do not overlap in time, and no text fills the gap between them. The Altaian rite is therefore the best account of how a steppe people killed a horse for a god. It can serve as a witness for the Göktürks only where it is taken as a possibility.

References

  1. ^ a b c Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  2. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 19–52; 46–76; Verbitskii 1893, p. 19–52; 46–76
  3. ^ a b c Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  4. ^ a b c d e f Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  5. ^ a b Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, vii.8.15, p. 191
  6. ^ Whitby 1986, p. 191, n. 47
  7. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  8. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Theophylact Simocatta
  9. ^ a b Kül Tegin inscription
  10. ^ Kutlu 2021, p. 777, 792
  11. ^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  12. ^ Han Shu, juan 94; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 28
  13. ^ Han Shu, juan 94
  14. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Han Shu, juan 94
  15. ^ a b Shiji, juan 110; Hou Han Shu, juan 89
  16. ^ Shiji, juan 110
  17. ^ Hou Han Shu, juan 89
  18. ^ a b c d Wei Shu, juan 103
  19. ^ Golden 1992, p. 49
  20. ^ Alsan 2024, p. 1440–1441
  21. ^ Golden 1992, p. 49; 1440–1441; Alsan 2024, p. 49; 1440–1441
  22. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 19–52
  23. ^ a b c Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 19
  24. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 19–20
  25. ^ a b c d e Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 20
  26. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 46–76
  27. ^ a b Verbitskii 1893, p. 75
  28. ^ a b c d e Verbitskii 1893, p. 43
  29. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 19; 43; Verbitskii 1893, p. 19; 43
  30. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 19; 44; Verbitskii 1893, p. 19; 44
  31. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 20; 46; Verbitskii 1893, p. 20; 46
  32. ^ a b c Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 21; 46; Verbitskii 1893, p. 21; 46
  33. ^ a b c Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 21
  34. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 22
  35. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 21–22; 47–48; Verbitskii 1893, p. 21–22; 47–48
  36. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 22; 48; Verbitskii 1893, p. 22; 48
  37. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 22–23
  38. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 23
  39. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 23; 48; Verbitskii 1893, p. 23; 48
  40. ^ a b c Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 24
  41. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 24; 49; Verbitskii 1893, p. 24; 49
  42. ^ a b c d e Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 25
  43. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 25; 50; Verbitskii 1893, p. 25; 50
  44. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 25–26
  45. ^ a b c Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 26
  46. ^ a b c Verbitskii 1893, p. 50
  47. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 26; 50; Verbitskii 1893, p. 26; 50
  48. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 26–27
  49. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 27; 51; Verbitskii 1893, p. 27; 51
  50. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 27
  51. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 27–28
  52. ^ a b c Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 28
  53. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 20, 28
  54. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 28–29
  55. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 29
  56. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 29–33
  57. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 33
  58. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 34–35
  59. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 35
  60. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 36
  61. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 37
  62. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 37–38
  63. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 41
  64. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 43
  65. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 44–46
  66. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 47–49
  67. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 49
  68. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 49–50
  69. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 50
  70. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 50; 75; Verbitskii 1893, p. 50; 75
  71. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 51
  72. ^ a b Harva 1938, p. 564
  73. ^ a b Harva 1938, p. 565
  74. ^ Harva 1938, p. 566; 568
  75. ^ a b Nurdin 2017, p. 112–113
  76. ^ Nurdin 2017, p. 121
  77. ^ a b Useev 2013, p. 103–104
  78. ^ Useev 2013, p. 110–111
  79. ^ Nurdin 2017, p. 108, 112–113
  80. ^ Nevskaya 2012, p. 45–46; 107; Nurdin 2017, p. 45–46; 107
  81. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 19–20, 26
  82. ^ Harva 1938, p. 559
  83. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 35–50; 75; Verbitskii 1893, p. 35–50; 75
  84. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  85. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 20; 43; Verbitskii 1893, p. 20; 43
  86. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 20, 23, 26
  87. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Theophylact Simocatta

Sources

Literature

  • Wilhelm Radloff, Aus Sibirien. Lose Blätter aus meinem Tagebuche. Zweiter Band (1893 (zweite Ausgabe))
  • Vasilii Ivanovich Verbitskii, Алтайские инородцы (Altai Foreigners) (1893)
  • Uno Harva, Die religiösen Vorstellungen der altaischen Völker (1938)
  • Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (trans.), The History of Theophylact Simocatta (1986)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Şenay Sayın Alsan, Gök Tanrı İnancının Türk İnanç Sisteminde Yeri ve Mimariye Yansımaları (2024)
  • Mehmet Kutlu, Leila Kutlu, Ölü Gömme Gelenekleri Bağlamında Berel Kurganları (2021)
  • Irina Nevskaya, An Old Turkic Inscription Found in the Vicinity of the Village Jabogan of the Republic Altai: Its Paleographic Analisys and Reading (türkisch: Altay Cumhuriyeti Jabogan Kasabası Çevresinde Bulunan Eski Türkçe Bir Yazıt: Metin ve Paleografik İnceleme) (2012)
  • Nurdin Useev, Altay Cumhuriyeti Yazıtlarından A 78 (Kurgak I) Yazıtı ya da Eski Türklerde Kurbanlık Yazısı (2013)
  • Useev, Nurdin, Altay Yazıtlarından Yabogan (A 84) Yazıtı ve Köktürkçe Vefeyat, At Tasviri Formülleri (2017)

Related

What links here4

Institutions and Titles
Kül Tegin's Horses · Oghuz Herds in Ibn Fadlan's Account
Religions
Iye · Ülgen and Kayra Khan

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Horse Sacrifice.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/religions/horse-sacrifice/

Last revised: 8 November 2026