TRACES OF PRE-ISLAMIC BELIEFS AND MYTHOLOGICAL MOTIFS IN THE VOCABULARY OF DIVAN LUGHAT AL-TURK
Keywords:
Divan Lughat al-Turk, Mahmud al-Kashgari, pre-Islamic Turkic beliefs, shamanism, Turkic mythology, historical lexicology, etymological analysis, religious vocabulary.Abstract
This research investigates the lexical traces of pre-Islamic Turkic beliefs, shamanic traditions, and mythological motifs preserved within the encyclopedic compendium Divan Lughat al-Turk, compiled by Mahmud al-Kashgari in the eleventh century. By applying a systematic etymological and semantic analysis to a corpus of selected vocabulary items, this study demonstrates that a substantial layer of archaic religious and cosmological terminology survived the Islamization process and remained embedded in the everyday speech of medieval Turkic communities. The research focuses on three principal thematic domains: shamanistic ritual vocabulary, animistic and totemic terminology, and cosmological lexemes associated with pre-Islamic Turkic mythology. The findings reveal that Kashgari, despite writing within an Islamic scholarly framework, inadvertently preserved a rich stratum of pagan vocabulary through his ethnographic and philological diligence. This paper argues that Divan Lughat al-Turk constitutes not merely a linguistic monument but also an irreplaceable repository of early Turkic religious memory, offering scholars a unique window into the spiritual worldview of pre-Islamic Turkic peoples.References
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