On linguistic sources of the ancient Turkic monuments of Central Asia

In the second half of the VI century on the territory of Central Asia, a new political entity was formed, known in the scientific literature as the "Great Turkic Khaganate". A new stage has been outlined in the history of the region under consideration and the vast adjacent territories. The rapid rise of the empire and the active expansion of nomads, which ended by the beginning of the 7th century. into the conditional Eastern Turkic and Western Turkic Khaganates, changed the political and ethno-cultural map of all of Eurasia. The tribal group that headed the political association of Turkic-speaking nomads called *türk ~ *türük [1, p. 166–169], that is, the Turks extended their name not only to the nomadic tribes related in language that inhabited the vast expanses of the Eurasian steppes, but also to their common material culture, ideology and forms of sociopolitical nomenclature.

In our study, we will make an attempt to summarize some data from written and archaeological sources on one of the aspects of the social history of the Turkic community - the social structure. The complex approach declared in this work involves the involvement of diverse materials, proceeding directly from the criterion of their significance for the problem posed. The study of the social history of the Turks of Central Asia as a whole is based on a significant fund of various by the nature of the materials. The basis of the source base of the presented research is, first of all, written sources.

The written sources of the ancient Turks can be classified on the basis of several criteria, the combination of which makes it possible to determine the degree of usefulness of the materials: by the time of creation, by the ethno-cultural and political affiliation of the authors (which, as a rule, coincides with linguistic attribution), by genre.

Based on the ethno-cultural environment of their origin, authentic written sources of the ancient Turkic era can be divided into the following groups: Turkic, Chinese, Byzantine, Sogdian, Khotan-Saka, Bactrian, Tibetan, Syrian, Muslim (Arab-Persian), Caucasian.

If we talk about Turkic sources, then this group can conditionally include monuments created in the Turkic-speaking nomadic environment, or, more broadly, materials containing first-hand information about the inner life of a nomadic society. First of all, these are monuments of the ancient Turkic runic writing, represented mainly by epigraphy and, in rare cases, documents on paper. These written sources of Turkic origin are of great importance, since, in essence, they are an authentic product of the Turkic culture itself, a rare phenomenon for nomadic history, reflecting a look at the life of the Turkic society from the inside [2,p.284-311]

The lexical and grammatical structure of a particular language reflects the worldview features of its speakers. Speaking about linguistic sources proper, it should be noted that language in general can be considered as a separate source. The analysis of vocabulary, the study of semantics and the establishment of the etymology of individual lexical units, as well as the analysis of syntactic constructions, concretize the content of the text under consideration, if we are talking about the language of the monuments of the Ancient Turkic era. However, working with this material requires taking into account historical and cultural realities - the conditions in which this language functioned.

Among the monuments of literature, Yusuf Balasagun's poem "Kutadgu bilik" is interesting, which is usually translated as "Blessed knowledge" or "Science [on how] to become happy." The poem consists of about 13 thousand poetic lines. A work of moral and ethical content, written in 1069-1070. commissioned by one of the Karakhanid rulers, is an imitation of the Persian genre andarz, i.e. "Mirror for princes". This is a kind of instruction, which in itself reflects a new concept of political domination [3, p. 142–152]. The book touches upon many aspects of social life and life of Turkestan. The poem is an important source for the study of the social, cultural and moral mouths of the Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia, but no more. It may be useful as a linguistic source.

In the same aspect, the work of a contemporary of Balasagun, philologist Mahmud ibn al-Hussein ibn Muhammad al-Kashgari "Diwan Lughat at-Turk" ("Collection of Turkic words"), written in 1074 in Baghdad, is of value. Obviously, the author pursued the goal of introducing the Arab-Muslim world to a new political force in the region - the Seljuk Turks [4, p. 494-495]. This work is invaluable not only as a linguistic source, as it was intended, but also as an important collection of infor mation for studying the social life, culture and life of the Turkic tribes of Central Asia in the 11th century. Explaining the meaning of certain words, Mahmud al-Kashgari often gives examples of their use in context, citing proverbs, sayings and verses.

In the work of Mahmud al-Kashgari there is a poem dedicated to the Turkic people:

-When they see that he is a Turk, the people must be will say to him: “Great things fall on this, [and] here [everything] ends].[5]

Many proverbs are relevant even after ten centuries: “Dress yourself well, and serve a delicious dish to another, honor a guest so that he carries fame among people about you”, “Listen to my advice, O son: strive for virtue in order to become a great person among the people and spread wisdom and virtue in it”, “If a person is alive, healthy, he will see many miracles”, “If a guest is served food that was available, it is not considered that this is not a treat”, “If you received a gift prepare something good for him in return,” etc. [5].

It is impossible to ignore the fact that almost all the words mentioned in the work "Diwan Lughat at-Turk" have been preserved in the modern Kyrgyz language and are used in the modern Kyrgyz language: airan (sour milk), bal (honey), kymyz (mare's milk), ko-moch (unleavened bread), ash-tamak (food), bozo (millet drink), balyk (fish) and much more.

There is no reason to use as a linguistic source the Uyghur version of the dastan about the Oghuz kagan or "Oghuz name", recorded around the 15th century in the Uyghur language. Judging by the presence of Mongolian borrowings, the original dates from the period no earlier than the 13th century [6]. "Oguz name", on the one hand, reflects the way of life and ideas about the norms of social life of a nomadic society with its tribal collectivism, age subordination and the dominance of customary law. On the other hand, it highlights the image of an ideal ruler who regulates the life of society through his lawmaking and the creation of a bureaucratic apparatus. The latter is undoubtedly connected with the influence of the settled agricultural culture, in particular, the Iranian tradition. Therefore, it is fair to believe that this epic reflects, rather, the state of the nomadic, Oguz, society in the period of its adaptation to a settled agricultural way of life [7].

At the same time, folklore conveyed to us the basic values of a nomadic society, for the unity of certain traditions reflected in the eth- nographic material of the Kyrgyz epic "Manas", closely connected with the Altai "Alp Manash", the Kazakh "Alpamys" and the Uzbek "Alpamysh".

Data from the epic of the Mongolian peoples, such as, for example, the Kalmyk "Dzhangar", can also be involved here. Many researchers have already done a lot of work to analyze information and identify historical and ethnographic plots in the Turkic-Mongolian epic [Ögel B., 1993; 1995; Abramzon S.M., 1947; Auezov M. [O.], 1961; Zhirmunsky V.M., 1961; Meletinsky E.M., 2004, p. 247–375; Korogly H.G., 1975; Lipets R.S., 1983; 1984; Trepavlov V.V., 1989; Rakhmanov N.A., 1991; Kichikov A.Sh., 1992; and others].

For the study of Central and Central Asia, such a source as the anonymous geographical treatise “Khitab hudud al-alam min al-mashrih ilya-l-magrib” (“The Book of the Limits of the World from East to West”), dating from 982-983, is useful. useful. Compiled in the possessions of the Samanids, this monument pursues precisely geographical goals. It contains detailed information about the lands surrounding the Samanid Emirate. It is important that in this work the author's field of vision includes not only the closest nomadic neighbors of the Pechenegs and the Oghuz Turks, but also the distant Yenisei Kirghiz and Uighurs, whose lands are described in much more detail than in other geographical works of Muslim authors. Look.

As can be seen from the works listed above, the information in them covers almost all aspects of the material and spiritual life of the Turks, their social life, dating back to the early Middle Ages. This makes these works ethnographically filled and as informative as possible.

Despite the fact that we have not listed all the written sources about the social life of the ancient Turks, we can say that the works we mentioned are, first of all, monuments of the Turkic dialectology of the early Middle Ages. They contain exceptionally valuable material on the history, ethnography and culture of many Turkic peoples.