Kün is the Turkic word for the sun and for the day. As a god, kün täŋri, the god of the sun, is first recorded among the Uyghurs. He appears in the titles of their khagans, which the Chinese wrote down in 821, and in the Old Uyghur texts, which pair him with ay täŋri, the god of the moon.[1] Before that the records give acts and no name. The Xiongnu chanyu bowed to the rising sun. The tent of the Göktürk khan opened to the east. A new khan was turned nine times with the sun. In the inscriptions the sun’s course names the four quarters.[2] The moon has its own article, Ay Ata.

Kün as sun and day

The Kül Tegin inscription names the quarters of the world by the course of the sun. The khan’s rule reaches eastward to the sunrise, southward to the midday, westward to the sunset and northward to the midnight, kün togsık, kün ortusı, kün batsık and tün ortusı.[3] The same word is the day. The khan says that for the Göktürk people he did not sleep at night and did not sit by day, küntüz. The man who cut the inscription says that he sat twenty days at the stone to write it.[3]

THE FOUR QUARTERS NAMED BY THE SUN kün togsıkkün ortusıkün batsıktün ortusı east, sunrisesouth, middaywest, sunsetnorth, midnight
The four quarters as the Kül Tegin inscription names them: three by the sun's course, red dots, and the north by the middle of the night, the black dot. East is drawn at the top. Modern diagram.

The word is also luck. A philologist of 1879 noted that sun and day are one word in the Turko-Tatar languages. He noted that the sun is the emblem of life and good fortune. A Chagatai phrase says “my sun has shone” for “luck was with me”, while the wish “may God let you see the sun” means “may God make you happy”.[4] The inscriptions use the word for the quarters and the day. In them it names no god.[3]

The Xiongnu chanyu and the sun

The Shiji describes the chanyu at his camp. In the morning he went out to bow to the sun’s first rising. In the evening he bowed to the moon.[5] The Han Shu repeats the statement.[6] The sun and the moon stand in the style of the ruler as well. Around 174 BC the court of Laoshang enlarged the style of its letters, on the advice of a Han defector. The new style called the ruler the great chanyu of the Xiongnu, born of Heaven and Earth and set up by the sun and the moon.[5] The sun is named here as one of the powers that ordained the ruler, beside Heaven and Earth. The article on the title gives the letters, and the Xiongnu have their own article.

The east-facing tent

The Zhou Shu says of the Göktürks that the khan always dwelt at Mount Dujin. His tent opened to the east, out of reverence for the place where the sun comes out.[7] The same chapter describes the installation of a khan. His close attendants and great ministers carried him on a felt and turned him nine times, following the sun. At each turn the subjects bowed.[7] The article on the rite gives the passage and the interpretations of the words “following the sun”.

The Hou Han Shu says of the Wuhuan, a people of the eastern steppe, that their tents opened to the east, toward the sun.[8] When the Sui emperor Yang visited the camp of Qimin Khan he wrote a poem in which the felt tents rise in the wind and the yurts open toward the sun.[9] The east-facing tent is a custom recorded for several peoples of the steppe. For the Göktürks the Zhou Shu gives the reason.

The Zhou Shu names no sun god. It names reverence for the place of the sunrise and a turn with the course of the sun, and it places the sacrifice to the spirit of heaven in the middle of the fifth month.[7] It records no cult of the sun as such for the Göktürks.[7]

The sun in the titles of the Uyghur khagans

From the khagans after Tun Bagha Tarkan the titles of the Uyghur rulers contain one of two phrases: ay täŋridä, by the god of the moon, or kün täŋridä, by the god of the sun. The Chinese wrote them as ai denglilo and jun denglilo.[10] They are understood as Manichaean phrases. The title of Tun Bagha has neither. The title of the khagan who made Manichaeism the faith of the state, Bögü Khan, included a phrase for the emanation of Mani.[10] The Karabalghasun inscription names the eighth khagan, the one of 808 to 821, as Ay Teŋride Kut Bulmış Alp Bilge Kağan.[11]

The Tang Huiyao gives the Chinese side. The title conferred on the khagan after Huaixin Khan died in 805 opens with 愛登里邏, the moon god.[1] The title conferred in the fourth month of 821 opens with 君登里邏, the sun god. It continues 羽祿密施勾主祿毗伽崇德可汗.[1] A title of 812 opens with 軍登里邏, the same sound written with another character.[1] The title of 816 and the titles of the two khagans who follow the title of 821 open with the moon again.[1] Modern lists of the titles in Turkic form do not agree on the reigns. One gives the sun to the khagans of 821 to 832, a second to the khagan of 832 to 839.[12]

The phrase goes with another. The titles say that the khagan has found Kut, kut bulmış. The ending -dä of the god’s name is taken to be the ablative “from”. Therefore the khagan found his Kut from the god of the sun or of the moon.[13] Whether Kut was given by the sun and the moon through Manichaeism or came from an older belief is not settled. See also Kut and Ay Ata.[14] The element tengri in a khagan’s title was in use among Turkic khagans before the conversion. It became a usual title of the Uyghur khagans with Manichaeism.[15]

A Karakhanid book of 1069 to 1070, the Kutadgu Bilig, names its king Kün-Toğdı, “Rising Sun”. It names his minister Ay-Toldı, “Full Moon”.[16] The book does not belong to the Göktürk age. It shows the pair in a later court.

Kün täŋri in the Old Uyghur texts

The Old Uyghur texts use both words as common nouns. Translated from the original Buddhist sources, ay täŋri and kün täŋri mean the moon and the sun, and literally the god of the moon and the god of the sun.[17] A Buddhist verse asks that the Buddha, like the sun, graciously dry up the sea of suffering of all beings. A Maitrisimit passage says that a sun-like Buddha is born into a house.[18]

A Manichaean confession of sins names the sun and the moon among the powers against which the hearers sin. The sins are against the sun, the moon and the gods who dwell in two bright palaces, kün ay täŋrikä eki yaruk ordo ičrä olurugma täŋrilärkä.[17] Another Manichaean text speaks several times of the palaces of the moon and of the sun.[17] The idea of the two lights as palaces is not a feature of Manichaeism elsewhere. Manichaeism elsewhere sometimes imagines them as ships, ferries or war chariots. The Uyghur form may be a local one.[17]

An old Uyghur hymn calls on both gods. It says: seeing sun god, protect us, seeing moon god, save us.[19] A Manichaean text in Sogdian has xwrβɣ-, “sun god”. The Tocharian words for the sun and the moon are formed with “god” as their second part. The Uyghur terms therefore have counterparts in the neighbouring languages.[17]

Origin of the god of the sun

The origin of the pair is argued, and there are three explanations. The first takes the phrases as Manichaean, since they appear in the titles only after the conversion.[10] That explanation cannot be proved, because outside the Manichaean texts no idea of two lights as the source of a ruler’s power is known to compare.[14] The second sees a Central Asian use of “god of the sun” and “god of the moon” that is older than Manichaeism, because Tocharian and Sogdian have the same compounds. It holds that the Manichaean missionaries could use an existing idiom.[14] The third looks to the steppe itself. The Xiongnu are said to have credited the sun and the moon with a special power to confer rule. The idea survives in some throne names of the rulers of the western Uyghur realm.[14]

The first rests on the titles, the second on the vocabulary and the third on the Chinese records of the Xiongnu. The three do not exclude each other. None of them reaches the Göktürks.

The sun among later peoples

The ethnography of the nineteenth century and after records the sun among the Altaians and Siberian peoples as a mother. Most of the Turkic peoples of Siberia address it as feminine, as Mother Sun, and the moon as masculine. The tales know a Sun Khan and a Moon Khan.[20] The Altaian shamanists swear by the sun. The formula contains the words kün ana körüptur.[21] The Yakuts call the sun and the moon two brothers who are both gods. They say that heroes were born by their grace.[21] On the shaman’s robe and cap of the Yakuts hang rings of iron or silver as the symbol of the Sun Lord, Kün Toyon. Shamans of Siberia hang metal plates and mirrors that stand for the sun and the moon on their robes.[22]

The collector of the Altaian cosmology placed Mother Sun in the seventh heaven with the wise Mergen Tengere, and the moon in the sixth. He held that the names Mother Sun and Father Moon, kün änä and ai ada, arose only from a likeness of sound and had no mythological meaning.[23] The Chuvash brought white animals to the Sun, or to Mother Sun, until quite lately.[20] The more northern peoples did not sacrifice to the sun. They counted it a being that sees what people do. “May the sun see”, they say. The Yakut who swears turns to the sun and asks that it refuse him light and warmth if the oath is false.[24] The Yakuts gave the hearth fire the best bite of each meal and offered nothing to the sun, because they did not fear it and saw in it only the source of good.[25]

Names and terms

Kün is the sun and the day. The inscriptions have kün togsık for the sunrise and the east, kün ortusı for the south, kün batsık for the west and küntüz for the day.[3] Täŋri in kün täŋri is the word that also names Tengri, here used for one god among several.[26] In the titles the phrase stands with the ending -dä, kün täŋridä, which the Chinese write 君登里邏. The usual rendering is “by the god of the sun”. Another rendering takes the ending as “from”.[27]

The compound with the moon is kün ay täŋri. A Western Uyghur throne name is quoted as Kün Ay Täŋridä Kut Bulmış.[19] The Altaian kün ana, Mother Sun, and the Yakut Kün Toyon, Sun Lord, belong to the ethnography of a later age and are not forms of the Uyghur title.

Reliability

The records fall into four groups. The Chinese histories describe acts: the chanyu who bows, the tent that opens east, the turns of the felt.[28] The inscriptions of the Göktürks use the word for the sun’s course and name no god.[3] The Uyghur titles and the Old Uyghur texts name the god of the sun, under Manichaean and Buddhist influence. The same compound has counterparts in Sogdian and Tocharian.[26] The ethnography is of its own time. It shows a mother sun whom people swear by and a Sun Lord on the shaman’s robe. It reaches the Göktürks only as an inference.

The sun of the Xiongnu and of the Göktürks is therefore a power that is bowed to, faced and followed. The god Kün Tengri is a name of the Uyghur age.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 98
  2. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Kül Tegin inscription
  3. ^ a b c d e Kül Tegin inscription
  4. ^ Vámbéry 1879, p. 157–158
  5. ^ a b Shiji, juan 110
  6. ^ Han Shu, juan 94
  7. ^ a b c d Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  8. ^ Hou Han Shu, juan 90
  9. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  10. ^ a b c Mackerras 1972, p. 152
  11. ^ Karabalghasun inscription; Wilkens 2024, p. 78
  12. ^ Özbay 2024, p. 187; 64; Şen 2018, p. 187; 64
  13. ^ Tishin 2022, p. 109
  14. ^ a b c d Wilkens 2024, p. 85
  15. ^ Özbay 2024, p. 187
  16. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplet 355
  17. ^ a b c d e Wilkens 2024, p. 84
  18. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 262, 274
  19. ^ a b Şen 2018, p. 64
  20. ^ a b Holmberg 1927, p. 422; 182–183; Harva 1938, p. 422; 182–183
  21. ^ a b İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 29
  22. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 29; 180; Harva 1938, p. 29; 180
  23. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 6
  24. ^ Holmberg 1927, p. 422
  25. ^ Vámbéry 1879, p. 158
  26. ^ a b Wilkens 2024, p. 84–85
  27. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 152; 109; Tishin 2022, p. 152; 109
  28. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50

Sources

Literature

  • Jens Wilkens (trans. Celalettin Bulut Bostan), Uygur Budizmi ve Manihaizm ile Yerel Dinlerin Etkisi: Dinî Terminoloji Örneği (2024)
  • Ali Ahmetbeyoğlu, Hüseyin Şen, Eski Türk Dininin Kozmolojisi ve Kozmogonisi (2018)
  • Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)
  • Betül Özbay, Uygur Bozkır İmparatorluğunun Çöküşüne Manihaizm mi Sebep Oldu? (2024)
  • Vladimir V. Tishin, Понятие qut в памятниках древнетюркской рунической письменности: ревизия трактовок [Ponjatie qut v pamjatnikah drevnetjurkskoj runičeskoj pis'mennosti: revizija traktovok] (2022)
  • Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
  • Wilhelm Radloff, Aus Sibirien. Lose Blätter aus meinem Tagebuche. Zweiter Band (1893 (zweite Ausgabe))
  • Ármin Vámbéry, Die primitive Cultur des turko-tatarischen Volkes, auf Grund sprachlicher Forschungen erörtert (1879)
  • Uno Holmberg (Harva), The Mythology of All Races, Volume IV: Finno-Ugric, Siberian (1927)
  • Uno Harva, Die religiösen Vorstellungen der altaischen Völker (1938)
  • Abdülkadir İnan, Tarihte ve Bugün Şamanizm: Materyaller ve Araştırmalar (2017; first edition 1954)
  • Robert Dankoff (trans.), Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig): A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes (1983)

Related

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Kün Tengri.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/religions/kun-tengri/

Last revised: 8 November 2026