Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University, Nevsehir, Turkey (E-mail: [email protected])
Cultural Anthropology: Symbolism of Color in the Worldview of Turkic Peoples
Abstract. The study of color symbolism in the culture of the Turkic peoples is relevant and necessary, since color reflects the ethnic mentality of the Turkic peoples, their collective social and cultural experience, as well as the individual’s personal psychophysical perception of the world. The visible world is also perceived through color, and therefore color is understood as an act of world vision and world awareness in the human mind. The purpose of this research (article) is to reveal the features of the mental perception of color by the Turkic peoples on the basis of the Orkhon-Yenissei written monuments, in particular, through the prism of ancient Turkic toponyms. The symbolic content of color is analyzed using data from cultural anthropology, history, linguistics, and ethnography. Therefore, the general scientific methods (descriptive, comparative) used in the article, combined with historical and cultural and conceptual-semantic ones, allowed us to reveal the symbolism of co lor in the culture of the ancient turks, to determine their mentality and spiritual views. The Orkhon-Yenissei monuments are evidence of the ancient Turkic civilization and the unique cultural history of the Turkic peoples. The ancient Turkic peoples recorded on stone steles the names of the Turkic khagans, their heroic campaigns and battles, the names of their own and other people’s settlements, settlements and countries, the names of natural objects, in the meaning of which color symbols also played an important role. The article provides a semantic analysis of green, black, and white color symbols, reveals the variety of their meanings that reveal the perception of the world by the ancient Turks.
Color symbols are defined as a unique code of the common Turkic culture.
Keywords: symbolism, world, perception, monuments, toponyms, color coding, meanings, cultural anthropology.
Introduction
Color in the history of all cultures has always been used as a means of emotional impact on the person that helped to develop certain color symbols in different cultures. It is an integral part of human existence, one of its specific characters. Being one of the oldest categories of knowledge, the color acquired symbolic significance.
Every nation, ethnic groups in a certain historical period evolved own symbolism. Color symbolism depends on color preferences, produced on the basis of human contact with the natural environment, surrounding landscape. Although it was not always stable and throughout human history content of color symbols undergone considerable changes, interpretation and attitude toward colors had been changing all the time. Color causes certain and specific changes in the mental world of people, the interpretation of which gives rise to what we call color associations, symbols and impressions of color. Thus, the symbolism of color had an important role, which included consolidation in the minds of people certain associative links of different colors with different life events over a long historical development. For many people color character in their lives was not only an important element of the canonical art, but also an expression of philosophical and religious ideas. Symbol in color turned into a means of ideological influence. Color symbols most clearly manifested in the architecture mainly in religious and socially significant buildings, such as domes of mosques, in the applied arts, clothing and even in language and etc.
The problem of color is constantly under the intent interest of many patriotic and foreign scholars, linguists who used different approaches for studying it. The names of the colors were studied using psychological and ethno-psychological approach from the point of view of their etymology and historical development of its system, symbolism, semantic structure. A number of researchers were involved to consider the color in the structure of different kind of language aids as phrases, phraseological units, place names, proverbs and etc.
Mostly they were interested in studying the characteristics of their functionality in the structure of language system. Over the years, the problem of color coding hasn’t been lost its relevance. Nowadays, a number of works of contemporary scholars are devoted to this problem, the problem of studying color in terms of the different sciences, based on the experience of previous researchers, confirming, supplementing or refuting earlier hypotheses and theories.
Materials and research methods
In the study of this problem scholars extensively use the several of techniques (component, contextual, statistical analysis and etc.), create new variety of research methods (psycholinguistic experiment, the index definition picturesque and etc.) involving the most complete description of color, especially their use and perception. They came to conclusion that it is one of the most important components of a language picture of the world. Color nomination system has its own characteristics in different languages. Color systems of different languages are very different from each other. This is primarily due to the fact that the language reflects coloristic associations of a particular culture, emerging in different historical and geographical contexts. Color perception and color view include all major areas of life.
In the study of this problem we considered some works of N.B. Bakhilina “The history of color coding in the Russian language” [1], A. Bragin “The color definition and creation of new meanings of words and phrases”
[2], R.M. Frumkina “Color meaning” [3], A. Apresyan “The lexical semantics, synonymous means of the language” [4], D.A. Arutiunova “The types of linguistic meanings” [5], A.P. Vasilevich “The vocabulary in psycholinguistic experiment” [6], Fu Huantsin “Analysis of words denoting a sign of «redness” in Chinese”, O.P. Frolova “Semantic group of color coding in Chinese: systemic relations” and etc.
A number of works of such scholars devoted to the definition of nominative specifics of the colors in different languages. The investigations have shown that the results of the nomination of the color spectrum can be quite different in different languages, both in the quantity and in terms of not matching color boundaries in the seemingly equivalent words. Most strongly these differences manifest themselves in typologically different languages.
The degree of research of the topic and analysis
Color as the physical quality of objects and space, became an informant and system of sense data, which ushered start of aesthetic worldview and social symbolism. Sense of color is one of the leading secondary feelings mentally and informational nature, formed on the basis of produced society socio-cultural phenotype and experience [7, p. 111]. In turn, the emergence of such a phenotype associated with bio-energy systems of humans. In other words the formation of individual and social experience takes place in parallel with the development of color sense. Thus, in the different languages of the world connotative polysemy and potentials are not developed in the same way. The color associated with deep social and cultural experiences. For example, the color code is the visual basis of various cults characteristic of Egypt, ancient country which has been done in the first attempt to use symbolism of color. In ancient India and ancient Greece in relation to the color is determined not only by its symbolic value, but also aesthetic categories. In ancient Rome, the most loved and revered colors were white, yellow, red and purple. After ancient times, the color becomes one of the main elements of the allegorical and mystical language, typical for the art of the Early Middle Ages. The archetype of color sense (meanings) was expressed in the language, particularly in the names of geographical objects.
For example ancient people had a complex system of color-coding the geographical objects. For example, the system of geographical color coding of aforesaid ancient Indian people was added with names of animals and divinities [8, p. 15-25]. Ancient Chinese had not less complex system of color-coding the geographical objects.
They used to link color with religious beliefs and symbolic signs of natural elements as fire, water, earth, iron, gold, forest and etc. [9, p. 65-69]. American Indians saw East side of world in dark black color, south – white, west – yellow or red and north – dark blue or green [10, p. 4]. The geographical color coding was universal phenomenon of ancient people. Therefore the different colors are presented in place names structure of all peoples all over the world. The Old Turks are not exception. They also used color coding in nominating process of geographical object. This is evidenced by texts of Orkhon-Yenissei monuments. For example in the texts of Orkhon-Yenissei monuments there is a toponym Kök Öŋ, which consists of color component kök. Kök has a set of lexical and semantic variants:
I.: 1. ‘sky’ in all Turkic languages;
2. ‘mourning’ in Uzbek language, ‘blueprint’ in Kumyk;
3. ‘blue, dark blue’ in all Turkic languages;
4. ‘green (about grass)’;
5. ‘immature fruits’ in Turkish dialects;
6. ‘grass’;
7. ‘grey’ in Kazakh, Nogai, Uzbek, Altay languages, ‘gray’ in Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash, ‘dove color’ in Tatar, Chuvash, Kumykian, ‘pale’ in Uigur languages;
8. ‘garying’ in Tuvinian language;
9. ‘god’ in Altay language;
II. 1. ‘healthy’ in Turkish language [12, p. 93].
On the basis of these meanings the color kök in the structure of place name Kök Ӧŋ denotes different meanings. The second component öŋ ‘color’ opens this meaning. In this case kök denotes ‘heavenly’ or
‘blue’ color. Perhaps the ancient Turks during nomination used the origin meaning ‘sky’. According to that this geographical object belongs to the class of hydronyms, we suppose that place name Kök Ӧŋ characterizes the ‘heavenly’ color of water. In history of Turkic language kök also used in the meaning of ‘green’ as a base or component for a set of names of flora and fauna. But kök by the creators of runic inscription is mostly used in the meaning of ‘sky’. It is used as a part of space. The sky was put at the head of the pantheon, as it is identified with Tengri - divine power, the upper level of trychotomic concept, the formation of which refers to the ancient times, to the Upper Paleolithic of Siberia. That is why the archetype of kök is the meaning of ‘sky’.
In the texts of Orkhon monuments there is also a hydronym Yašїl Ügüz . We show an example from Bilge Kagan’s text: ečim kagan birle ilgerü yašїl ügüz šaŋtuŋ yazїqa tegi süledimiz. - Together with my uncle-Kagan we went forward (e.g. the east) to war until Šantuŋ field, Yašїl river [14]. Yašїl denotes:
1. ‘green color’ in all Turkic languages, ‘dark green’ in Khalaj language, ‘bright green or green and blue’ in Old Uigur language;
In figurative meaning it denotes:
2. ‘bright’ and ‘fresh’ in Kyrgyz language, ‘unripe and damp’ in Turkish and Karakalpak languages;
3. ‘duck with green head’ in Altay language;
4. ‘dove colored’; ‘auburn horse’ in Turkish dialects [12, p. 91-92].
All these meanings are related to one another. But the last one is seperated. May be it is related to Yakut language, which gives the meaning of ‘fox’ or ‘yellow’. Yašїl derevates from ya:š; probably crasis of *yasšїl was the Den. suffix –sїl; properly of the color of fresh vegetation, i.e. ‘green’ but like Kök not very precise and sometimes used for ‘light blue’; this lack of precision still survives. In Turkish yeşilis ‘green’, but green grass is Kök ot. As we see generating basis of Yašїl is Yaš. And it is also gives several semantic meanings: a) ‘damp’; b) ‘wet, watery’; c) ‘teardrop’; d) ‘green’; e) ‘fresh’; f) ‘young’;
g) ‘age’, ‘year’; h) ‘wood layers’. According to A. Vambery there is semantic link between ‘young’,
‘green’ and ‘wet’. Radloff, trying to show derivation of ‘age, year’ meanings from ‘fresh, green, radiant, wet’ meanings, made an explanation: ‘each year (age) is the time of annually returning humidity’ – it means that these meanings are very closer to each other. G. Clausson and H. Derfer imagined the semantic evolution of Yaš in this way: ‘fresh green’; ‘wet wet excretion tears’; ‘each year per age of one’s life’ [12, p. 975]. The primary form of Yašїl was Yašsїl ≥ Yaššїl (Yaš + -sїl≥-šїl suffixes which weaken the feature of the object) [15, p. 163]. The most common seme of the lexeme Yaš is
‘green’. And all other semantic meanings were arisen from “green”. We have two variants of own interpretation: 1) If we take into consideration the third meaning of Yaš, ‘teardrop’ and semantic evolution ‘wet wet excretion tears’ in this case ‘tears’ stands for ‘a lot of tears water river, lake’, on the basis of this it may be regarded that the semantic interpretation of lexeme Yašїl indicated
‘watery river’. 2) According to aforesaid Bang’s hypothesis on suffix –sїl ≥ -šїl, Yašїl means ‘light green’. We suppose that Yašїl has semantic evolution: ‘light green dark yellow yellow’. That is why in historical sources Yašїl Ügüz is identified as ‘Yellow River’. Today Yašıl Ügüz is well-known as Yellow River situated on the north side of China. It is known also as Huanghe River. In Chinese Huanghe means Huan ‘yellow’ and ghe ‘River’. It might be loan translation of Yašїl Ügüz. Gumilev wrote that Yašїl Ügüz and Huanghe are the same rivers. He noted that the river had yellow color.
Through the semantic evolution we made an attempt to explain the link between Turkic Yašїl and Chinese Huan colors and prove the fact that in Old Turkic people representation Yašїl semantically was rich and various, determined not only ‘green’ color but also ‘yellow’ too. If we look at Yašїl only as a color element, in this case semantic meaning of Yašїl Ügüz place name is only limited on “yellow”
color, there is no figurative meaning. But interesting fact is that the ‘yellow color’ mostly was saved in
the form of Sarїγ ≥ Sarї in the language system of Modern Turkic people. However, Sarїγ in Turkic toponymic structure and in Turkic representation in general does not mean only color element but the
‘hugeness, wideness’ too. In ‘Sarї dala’ it gives the meaning of ‘huge steppe’, Sarї jol means ‘big road’
in Kazakh language [17, p. 118].
The color Qara is presented in the structure of place names of the ancient Turkic period. Qara Köl and Qara Kum were found in the texts of Kultegin and Tonukuk monuments: az budun yaγї boltї qara qölte sünüšdümüz költegin bir kїrk yašaїr erti alp salčı aqїn binip oplaїu tegdi – Az people became enemy. We fought in Karakol. Kultegin was thirty one years old. He attaked being on the white horse, Alp Shalchy (KT 2-3). čugay quzїn qara qumuγ olurur ertimiz – We had chosen places of Kuz Chugai and Kara Kum (T 7) [11, p. 145].
İn the content of place names Qara is usually used as the first element of denoting toponyms as well as antroponyms and ethnonyms. But the semantic meaning of seme Qara may be regarded primarily in a physical sense as ‘black’ (about color), but with a great many metaphoric meanings ‘dark, devoid of light, benighted’; ‘ill-fated, ill-starred, miserable’ in Chuvash; ‘bad, scary, terrible, nasty, ugly, bleak, tragic, dismal’ in Turkish and Kumyk; ‘usual, simple’; ‘mass, crowd’ in Kazakh; ‘great, powerful, severe’ used in rulers proper names of Karakhanid dynasty and in Gagauz [12, p. 495].
There are set phrases in which the word qara means:
1. ‘large, massive, plenty’, e.g. Qara mal in Kazakh, Karakalpak, Nogai and Uigur languages means ‘cattle’;
2. ‘chief, great, powerful’, Qara khan means ‘great arch-founder of Karakhanid dynasty’ or Qara aygir means ‘mighty stallion’, Qara bodun ‘the ordinary people’ (as opposed to aristocracy) [13]. For example, the name of famous sea known to the Greeks as Pontos Qara teniz known as Black Sea had aroused considerable interest. The ancient Pontos in loan translation became known among the Turks as
‘Black Sea’. Pontos gives the meaning of ‘Inhospitable Sea’ in Greek language. In Turks representation
‘inhospitable’ denotes ‘bad, scary, terrible’. In European sources of XIII centuries Black Sea was called as ‘Great Sea’. Qara also gives the meaning of ‘great, powerful’. So it can be connected with all these meanings;
3. ‘strong’ (about wind, frost), Qarakiş in Turkish≤ Gara gysh in Azerbaijan denotes ‘the most frozen time of winter’, Qara suik in Nogai language ‘the srongest frost’;
4. ‘clear, pure’ (without any admixture), Qara su in Kazakh language ‘pure water’ or ‘only water’;
5. ‘dry land, earth’, Qara kuvvetleri ‘ground forces’, Qara kurbağa ‘ground tortoise’ in Turkish;
6. ‘the darken part of horizon, North’. Old Turks also as other peoples widely used color coding in indicating the cardinal points. One of the important evidence proving the ‘black color’ denoted North part of horizon in Turkic world-picture was Desht-Qipchak. It was divided into White and Black Kumania in XII centuries. Black Kumania was on the north side of horizon. The center of Black Kumania was North Donesk. Bulgarians, lived close to Az, were called as Black Bulgarians. The name of their state was Black Bulgaria, situated on the north side. The name was given because of the geographical position [15, p. 334];
7. ‘eagle’, Qara quş (probably specifically ‘golden eagle’) or ‘the star Jupiter’ (it is the one rises at down and is called Qara Kuş yulduz) in Turkish;
8. ‘slave’, Qara baş (both male and female) [18, p. 128].
Taking into consideration all meanings of lexeme Qara we can clearly say that Qara kum has two meanings:
1. ‘dry land, earth’ in which it denotes the type of fixed sand;
2. ‘the darken part of horizon, north’ which might also be interpreted as the northern horde of Qarakhan. Gabain suppose that seme Qara in Qara kum ‘Black Nothern desert’ is related to its territorial situation on the northern part of Khorasan. Supporting Gabain’s point of view and plusing two meanings we suppose that Qara kum denotes ‘nothern sandy desert’. Zsegledi, who devoted much attention to the location of Qara kum, came to conlusion: ‘Qara kum is the name of sandy desert, situated on the northern frontier of China. Exactly it is on the nothern slope of Insan close to Huanghe river and Gobi desert. Qara in the Qara Köl place name is considered by us as the ‘clear, pure (without any admixture) lake’. İn Kultegin inscription Qara Köl is mentioned one time and it was the place where they fought with Az people in 715. There are some assumptions about its location: 1) Qara Köl was situated
near the Kemchik river, Aksu and Alash flowed into this lake. It might also be situated near Kögman (Sayan mountains, Khakassia, Russian Federation); 2) Qara Köl is situated in Tuva (Russian Federation).
The color Aq is also mentioned in the structure of place name Aq Termel in the text of Tonukuk (25) monument: sü jorїtdїm atlat tedim aq termel keče ugur kalїtdїm - I odered army to move; I said: ride horses! Passing Aq Termel I odered to stop for a camp [11, p. 146]. The word Aq has a set of variants. Here are two different variants of it:
1) A:q (with long double sound ‘a’) in all sources gives the direct meaning of ‘white color’. In figurative meaning gives ‘pure’ and ‘wonderful, outstanding, amazing’. We see the semantic evolution of Aq in this way: 1) ‘white pure wonderful’. It also gives the meaning of ‘seine’ in Turkish; ‘lattice’ in Karakalpak and Kumyk languages; ‘rete’; ‘hunting’ in Kazakh and Karakalpak languages.
2) Aq (with one sound ‘a’) means ‘stream, flow, flow out’ in all Turkic languages; ‘flow, stream, pour in, rain’ in Tatar and Uzbek languages; ‘aqua, liquid, wet, teardrop’ [19, p. 496]. A:k ‘white’ originally as the color of animals’ coat is opposed to the more general word ürüŋ, later ‘white’ in all senses. It occurs often with a metaphoric meaning in numerous phrases of which, e.g. the word Aq in the meaning of
‘flow’ became a part of geographical nomenclature. Aq kum gives the meaning of ‘sand dunes, quick sands’, Aq su ‘rivers, fed by mountains snow’ or ‘quick rivers’. In Aq dala it implies ‘sand dune massive’
and ‘steppe with flowing, shifting sands’. Taking into consideration geographic symbolism of Old Turks Aq in color sense also gives the meaning of ‘the west side of horizon’. Aq deniz ‘West Sea’ is one of the names of Caspian Sea. Apparently Russian kings (tsars) were called ‘White Tsars’ (i.e. ‘West Tsars) by Turks. Aq süjek (white bone) in Kazakh language possibly saved from that period, which implies ‘king’s (tsars) blood, the blood of dynasty’.Aq saqal‘a grey bearded man’, mostly expresses respect [19]. But in Aq Termel we consider two variants of interpretation of the seme Aq: 1) the ‘white’ color, in which it denotes the ‘pureness of the water’ and 2) the ‘flow’, in which it denotes the character of river ‘quick river’ or ‘flowing river’.
The word ürüŋ in capacity of color coding of geographical objects is met in the structure of place name Ürüŋ Beg, which is fixed in the texts of Orkhon-Yenissei written runic monuments. Lexeme ürüŋ denotes:
1. ‘white’, ‘light’;
2. ‘pure, noble (in figurative meaning)’ [20, p. 339]. According to the meaning of the second component bäg ‘a ruler of the town’, in our point of view the word ürüŋ in the place name Ürüŋ Bäg was used in figurative meaning as ‘noble’. There is also the other supposition that in Orkhon-Yenissei written runic monuments the word also denotes the meanings “save, defend”. In this case the given place name is interpreted as ‘a bright place, protected by the ruler’. However, due to the fact that this is just an assumption, we still interpret it using the first meaning of the place name Ürüŋ Bäg as ‘noble ruler’.
Results and conclusion
Thus, color was an important element in characterizing geographical objects, place names. And the place names consisting of color components have variety of figurative sense of the content. The symbolism of colors in the structure of the ancient place names and their semantic analysis reveal the essence and nature and the origin, etymology, archetype of the colors. We see that color picture of the world of Turkic people is distinctive. For example, the meaning of a lot of place names consisting color are differentiated by the characteristics of geographical object. It is shown in place name Qara kol which does not denote the color of river, but means the pureness and clarity, limpidity of the water of river. The variety of meanings of this word attributes it to polysemy. This phenomenon is typical for the contemporary Turkic language, particularly for ancient Turkic language. We know that the language plays an important role in preserving the spiritual achievements of the people, as a kind of historical memory, reproduced imprinted in him the facts of culture in the process of its use as a means of knowledge, in turn, has the ability to influence the formation and development of culture.
The essence of the color including in the structure of the geographical objects are well represented in ancient written runic monuments, literary texts, where they show the ability to change the sense of the whole nomen. In this case we also can say that the color is also an important means of emotional impact.
That is why place names consisted color often have emotive character, become images of relevant construction of the national world view, as well as individual worldview.