Tengri

'Blue Heaven'; Old Uyghur: tängri; Middle Turkic: تآنغرِ; Ottoman Turkish: تڭری; Kyrgyz: Теңир; Kazakh: Тәңір; Turkish: Tanrı; Azerbaijani: Tanrı; Bulgarian: Тангра; Proto-Turkic: *teŋri / *taŋrɨ; Mongolian script: ᠲᠩᠷᠢ,[1] T'ngri; Mongolian: Тэнгэр, Tenger; Uyghur: تەڭرى, tengri[2]) is the all-encompassing God of Heaven in the traditional Turkic, Yeniseian,[citation needed] Mongolic, and various other nomadic religious beliefs.

[5] According to Mongolian belief, Tengri's will (jayayan) may break its own usual laws and intervene by sending a chosen person to earth.

[dubious – discuss] It involves ancestor worship, as Tengri was thought to have been the ancestral progenitor of mankind in Turkic regions and Mongolia,[7] shamanism, animism, and totemism.

[citation needed] The oldest form of the name is recorded in Chinese annals from the 4th century BC, describing the beliefs of the Xiongnu.

[10][11] Andrey Kononov suggested that the term is formed by the words tän (morning) and injir (evening) into tänri, referring to the sky as whole.

[12] Other reflexes of the name in modern languages include Mongolian: Тэнгэр ("sky"), Bulgarian: Тангра, Azerbaijani: Tanrı.

[18] Linguist Stefan Georg has proposed that the Turkic word ultimately originates as a loanword from Proto-Yeniseian *tɨŋgVr- "high".

They wore titles such as tengrikut, kutluġ or kutalmysh, based on the belief that they attained kut, some sort of heavenly and spiritual force granted to these rulers by Tengri.

[29] The most important contemporary testimony of Tengri worship is found in the Old Turkic Orkhon inscriptions, dated to the early 8th century.

They ruled people by Turkish laws, they led them and succeeded" (face 1, line 1); "Tengri creates death.

Human beings have all been created in order to die" (Old Turkic: Öd Teŋri yasar kisi oγlu qop ölgeli törürmis), (face 2, line 9); "You passed away (lit.

Khagans ruled by the will of Tengri thought the ancient Turkic people and preserved these thoughts in the texts of the Orkhon inscriptions in the following way: "I, Tengri-like and Tengri-born Turk Bilge Kaghan, succeeded to the throne at this time" (Old Turkic: Teŋiriteg Teŋiride bolmuš Türük Bilge Qaγan bü ödüke olurtum).

[30] In one Turkic myth, Tengri is a pure, white goose that flies constantly over an endless expanse of water, which represents time.