Articles
A Yakut folklore parallel to a legend from the stele commemorated Idiquts of Qocho (1334)
Evgeny Duvakin
Vostok/Oriens '2016, №6
The Stele commemorated Idiquts of Qocho, dating to 1334 and found in 1933 in Gansu, bears Chinese and Uyghur inscriptions including a legend on the origin of the Uyghur ruling dynasty. According to the text, its founder was Udan Boquq Qan born from the tumour on a tree. It seems that concerning Inner Asia such legends are testified only by the sources of the late thirteenth and of fourteenth centuries, the manuscript Z of The Travels of Marco Polo, Yuan wen lei and Yuan shi among them, and always referring to Turpan. So, the “origin of a powerful man from a tumour on a tree” motif looks like an innovative and unique dialect trait of Turpan tradition. But when one expands geography of comparative data it becomes clear that it is not the case. The crucial parallel is found in East Siberian folklore. A record made in 1925 among the Yakuts tells about the miraculous tree with tumours from which shamans and other persons acquainted with magic are born. The fact of the parallel agrees with data on the origins of the Yakuts and data of comparative mythology. The ancestors of this Turkic-speaking group inhabited an area between the Ordos and the Sayan Mountains before 200 CE, and the vicinities of the Baikal (ca. 800–1200 CE) before their migration in northern parts of Eastern Siberia. That is why there is the set of specific Southern (probably, of Inner Asian origin) motifs in Yakut folklore tradition. In Eurasia the “origin of a powerful man from a tumour on a tree” motif is found rarely and its presence in Inner and North Asia only in such Turkic-speaking groups as the Uyghurs and the Yakuts has most likely a historical explanation. The Yakut parallel indirectly testifies to the idea that the motif was known to some ethnic groups of South Siberia by the twelfth–thirteenth century.
Keywords: Kingdom of Qocho, folklore of Turkic and Mongolian peoples, comparative mythology, shamanism, area distribution of folklore motifs
Pages: С. 17–26
