Characters of the lowest mythology in traditional outlook of the North Caucasus Turkish-speaking peoples

Abstract

The religion, as well as the whole spiritual culture, has been developing and changing under the influence of real life throughout centuries. Natural phenomena gradually start to be endowed with properties of live beings, often even with those of human beings, with the ability to think, feel, speak and with the shape of an animal or a person. The most important trend of myth creation in ancient times was the appearance of mythical beings in which properties and qualities of all similar creatures were generalized, and some of them were endowed with demonic features.The dragon (Sarubek) with three, seven or nine heads of monstrous size and power was the most ancient of such beings of the North Caucasus Turkish-speaking peoples. As a rule, the dragon was represented as hostile to people blocking a watercourse or drinking water out from it, which caused hunger and drought. The Nogais represented the Azdaa creature in the image of a huge water dragon. The demon Azdaa had a heavenly colleague – Sazagan who was represented as a huge long monster similar to a snake. The most known images in Karachai-Balkar folklore are the Emegens, ugly-looking gluttonous giants, who were the enemies of the Narts. The Almasty, or Albasty, or Arvasly, are distinguished out of the analyzed type of characters. Though, as well as people, they are divided into men and women, the women are more often described in the myths either as very ugly or as strikingly beautiful beings, with long hair and without any clothes. The character was common among many Turkish-speaking peoples of Central Asia,Kazakhstan, the Volga region andSiberia. «The wood person» was another mythological being represented as the keeper of the wood who punished people for cutting trees and was a symbol of the idea of careful attitude to all living. The folklore of the North Caucasus Turkish-speaking people also represents the image of a demonic being Elmauz (or Dzhelmauz in the Karachai-Balkar folklore) with the ability to cause a moon eclipse. The image of the demon appears also in the beliefs of theKirghizpeople, the Kazakhs, the Uzbeks, the Tatars, the Uyghur people, the Bashkirs. Bastyrak was the demon without a certain image and caused the condition of sudden catalepsy of a body, as the Karachais, the Balkars, the Kymiks and the Nogais believed. Azmych also did not have a certain image and was represented as a being hostile to lonely travellers. The Turkish peoples believed that the Universe was ruled by the gods and then by the “owners” of terrains, or “iyesi”, living in an invisible world in middle zone of the Universe and obeying directly to the Great God of the Sky Tengri and to the Earth God. They were considered as true owners of mountains, woods, rivers, etc. As a whole, the variety of pagan mythological characters of the North Caucasus Turkic peoples should be noted. The research of mythological characters of a pagan pantheon and pandemonium allows to state that there was rational knowledge of environment in the outlook of the North Caucasus Turkish-speaking peoples. That knowledge was obtained by empirical way during many centuries and served to endow some objects of nature with magic abilities and properties.