Dingir and Tengri

[ihsanerkoc]

Greetings dear members,

I am a PhD student studying Central Asian Turkic History at Hacettepe University in Turkey. While making researchs about the religion of medieval nomadic Turkic and other steppe peoples, I came across a theory that links the Old Turkic concept Täŋri (Tengri) with Sumerian Dingir. This view has been quite popular in Turkey, especially after Osman Nedim Tuna published his book Sümer ve Türk Dillerinin Tarihi Ýlgisi ile Türk Dilinin Yaþý Meselesi ("The Historical Relationship of Sumerian and Turkic Languages and the Problem of the Age of Turkic Language"; you can translate Turkic as Turkish too as in Turkish there is no division between the two).

However, according to Talat Tekin in his A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic, Old Turkic Täŋri derived from the root word Täg- meaning "turn around/over" and this root word became Täŋ- as a result of a dialectical change. Thus, this makes Täŋri originally meaning the material sky and it only became the supreme steppe deity much later, contrary with Sumerian Dingir which already had the meaning of "deity" perhaps much earlier than the Turkic one.

So, my question is, are these two concepts related, or as Tekin points out, they developed independently (Tekin does not make any mention of the Sumerian language nor the word Dingir, but him making no mention of these and showing a Turkic etymology for Täŋri instead of a Sumerian word made me reach this conclusion)? If not, what is the etymological explanation of Sumerian Dingir? This is very important because the currently dominant view in Turkology, represented with Tekin above, says that Turkic Täŋri was originally only a material concept meaning the sky, it became a religious cult only later. If there is a connection with Sumerian Dingir, it will shake the foundations of the currently dominant view (which I share as well).

Oh and by the way, I am not one of those wacko weirdo Turkish guys who claim that the "Sumerians were Turkic/Turkish", and I am well-aware of the vast chronological and geographical distances between the two groups of peoples, so I just decided to ask you people.

Thanks in advance.

[darkl2030]

I don't understand what you are asking. If you are "well-aware of the vast chronological and geographical distances between the two groups of peoples," then why do you need to ask about any connection between Dingir and Tengri? The answer, as you seem to predict, is that there is absolutely no connection whatsoever. Any similarity between any Sumerian "word" and any other word from any other language (other than, of course, Akkadian) is pure coincidence. You can throw this "Sümer ve Türk" book in the trash along with the works of Sitchin because I guarantee you everything written in it is about as plausible as alien and spaceship theories.

As for dingir itself, all we know is that it is translated by the Akkadian ilu "god." There is no known etymology. It is certainly significant that it is spelled using a symbol of a star, but it does not neccesarily always have to have a cosmic reference and it can refer to netherworld or earth bound deities. In fact when "dingir" appears on its own, it most often actually means "(personal) god."

I apologize if I seem like I am being rude above, but really, it has come to point where crackpot theories are far more popular and accesible than anything having to do with real Sumerology, and I find this a somewhat frustrating state of affairs.

[Salmu]

Dear ihsanerkoc,

Welcome to the board.

In answer to your question, I am (with my limited understanding of Turkic and Altaic linguistics) unaware that there is any academic support for a connection between the Sumerian (dingir/AN) and Turkish. This does not preclude the likelihood of a connection, however unlikely, but current scholarship in the West appears not to support this theory. At least I can find no academic support for same.

I would recommend reading Piotr Michalowski's 'The Life and Death of the Sumerian Language in Comparative Perspective' ...on this link www-personal.umich.edu/~piotrm/DIGLOS~1.htm for a sound discussion of Sumerian linguistics, Actually, anything by Michalowski is worth a look.

Cheers Andrea

[us4-he2-gal2]

Well I can see why this is a contentious issue. The theory of Prof. Tuna may seem like just another linguistic theory, but when we consider that Sumerian has for decades been considered a language isolate and that the mystery of the ethnic and linguistic makeup of the Sumerians has lead people to write books on "The Sumerian Problem" .... for this fellow to say that he now knows a related language and it's none other than modern Turkish, is actual quite radical. For people who are obsessed with the linguistic aspects of Sumerian, this fellow might seem as crazy - as much as Sitchin is to those of us following Sumerian mythology in translation.

I can tell you are in the field DarkL2030, as that engaging and/or aggressive intellectual stance is characteristic - on the other hand, ANE departments are generally ghost towns of social inactivity, and so we should be more level here


And in academic fairness we can't just assume Prof. Tuna's suggestions are bogus - well, the evidence itself would indicate how true or untrue that is. We have to remember that Benno Landsberger himself started the Sumerological department in Turkey, or so I've heard.


Unfortunately Ihsanekoc, none that you are asking here can read Turkish, I suppose. You have done a good job countering Tuna with Tekin, and it seems like you already believe Tekin more. As DarkL points out also, the western stance is that it is coincidence. In order to compare DINGIR with Tengri, saying its the result of language change or phonetic change then we would have to first consider that Sumerian and Turkish are related languages. If we don't - than its coincidence.


So we can't consider this problem further without hearing Tuna's reasons for proposing that the languages are related - but as none of us can read Turkish, and his arguments for relating the language are likely quite long (more than you could translate really) than this issue probably won't be advanced much further here I am supposing. It's a valid question though, sure.

[ihsanerkoc]

Thank you everyone for your replies, they have been helpful.

Cheers!

[Salmu]

Bill; Because silence naturally infers consent, I would like to state for the record that: I did not find darkl2030's response to be 'agressively intellectual'...nor was it academic.

Therefore I consider it was inappropriate to a social medium purportedly designed for the exchange of both lay and scholarly ideas and information.

Outbursts like that hardly encourage people to participate actively in our discussions.

A

[us4-he2-gal2]

Now A: Should you truly have an opinion on something, you can't misconstrue the possibility that silence was ever going to happen 0_0 False premise.

[darkl2030]

In fairness one should point out that Sumerian and Turkish don't have to be related languages for Dingir and Tengir to be connected. It is perfectly possible that we made be dealing with a very ancient cultural loanword or borrowing, possibly even from a distant relative of Sumerian into Turkish, though it should not be expected that this notion could ever be confirmed or even supported from the extant evidence. A borrowing from turkish into sumerian itself (or directly from Sumerian into turkish) is of course far less likely since the ancestors of the Turks as far as we know were quite far away in Eastern asia. Maybe the Turks could even have inherited "dingir" from an intermediary, such as the civilizations of eastern iran with which the Sumerians were known to have had contacts. We will never know. But there is little reason for any of these purely conjectural theories to replace any sound conventional etymological evidence within the Turkic language family itself such as given by Tekin.

Sumerian itself borrowed plenty of words from Akkadian and some words can even be shown to have been borrowed from a pre-Akkadian semitic substratum, and then re-loaned into Akkadian in historical times. There are also a number of words in Sumerian which very much look like they could have been borrowed from an ancient offshoot from the Indo-European family, though it will remain forever impossible to confirm this. Examples are u18 "ewe" and IR3 and GEME2 (male and female slave, which bear an intriguing resemblance to the PIE words for male and female, respectively), and also possibly GIGIR (originally "wheel").

Another example of this sort of connection is the Sumerian word for the Indus Valley civilization, meluhha, which very likely shares an origin with sanskrit mleccha "foreigner."

Point is, loanwords are very different from actual genetic linguistic relationship, and they of course can and probably did happen much more readily in ancient times than we will ever be able to detect. In fact, the very height of sumerian worldwide cultural influence, the Uruk period, actually predates the appearance of texts, so we will be forever unaware of what cultural/linguistic exchanges may have occured during this time.

But the type of reasoning given here, tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Polat_Kaya/message/254 which I assume is similar to what is in the above mentioned work of Tuna, and against which I had intitally reacted so strongly, is absolute nonsense.

[ninurta2008]

While I doubt Tengri and Dingir are etymologically connected, for the reasons that Tengri seems to derive from a turkish word, that isn't much like Dingir, there has been speculation that the two are related. If you've ever heard of the Nostratic languages, some versions of the theory incorporate Elamite and Sumerian into a grouping with Dravidian. In many versions of Nostratic theory, they say that Dravidian, Eurasiatic (IndoEuropean, Altaic (that's the family Turkish is in), Uralic, etc.,..) and others are in.

I'm not a fan of nostratic for my own reasons. I don't think it follows the genetic evidence of the populations its supposed to include enough.

[enkur]

One shouldn't be so quick in rejecting ideas of non-western scholars. There are a lot of insightful academic studies and hypotheses on the ANE matters published in languages other than English, German, French etc. Even if these sources are pointed to, who will read them and refer to them? That's why recently the non-western scholars write resumes of their studies in English at the end of their publications. Seems the western academic scholarship regards itself self-enough, and if it refers to non-western sources, it's mainly to Russian ones, and the reference is always with certain reserves.


The Sumerian was in use long after the Sumerians were extinct, and the west and central Asiatic peoples were in dynamic interaction with each other through all the centuries. For example, the ancient Bulgarians who invaded the Balkans in the VI - VII century CE worshiped a central sky god called Tangra but they weren't of Turkic origin. They were north-Iranian people who participated in the Hun alliance of Atilla in the V century CE wherein participated many Turkic peoples (along with Slavic and Gothic ones).

[us4-he2-gal2]

Well these are some very insightful replies all around, thanks all!


Darkl - your reply #7 to this thread is absolutely brilliant The Sumerian word for foreigner and the sanskrit mleccha and all of it. Personally, I'm satisfied with the thread at this point.

[ihsanerkoc]

Quite helpful indeed, thank you all.

[ninurta2008]

Feb 27, 2012 5:19:49 GMT -5 enkur said:

One shouldn't be so quick in rejecting ideas of non-western scholars. There are a lot of insightful academic studies and hypotheses on the ANE matters published in languages other than English, German, French etc. Even if these sources are pointed to, who will read them and refer to them? That's why recently the non-western scholars write resumes of their studies in English at the end of their publications. Seems the western academic scholarship regards itself self-enough, and if it refers to non-western sources, it's mainly to Russian ones, and the reference is always with certain reserves.


The Sumerian was in use long after the Sumerians were extinct, and the west and central Asiatic peoples were in dynamic interaction with each other through all the centuries. For example, the ancient Bulgarians who invaded the Balkans in the VI - VII century CE worshiped a central sky god called Tangra but they weren't of Turkic origin. They were north-Iranian people who participated in the Hun alliance of Atilla in the V century CE wherein participated many Turkic peoples (along with Slavic and Gothic ones).

My reasons for rejecting nostratic theory, has more to do with genetics of the populations it covers, and what languages they do or don't include. I think that, for instance, Uralic and IndoEuropean are much farther away, and that Altaic might even be closer to the Siberian languages.

It just seems like it should be that way based on the prehistoric migrations of people, evidenced in our genetic code.

Do they know the origins of Tangra? Maybe it was borrowed from the Turks? Someone else? Maybe its slavic?

I do, with regards to certain ideas within nostratic, find interesting how some nostraticist scholars link Dravidian to Elamite, and sometimes even Sumerian. Mainly because of some proto-dravidian words that are similar to Sumerian. If Sumerian is related to the "elamo-dravidian" languages (if they're related even), and nostratic did exist, and altaic is in it, then Sumerian and Turkish would be related.

[enkur]

Nothing is sure on that matter. The name of the ancient Bulgarian sky and thunder god Tangra could have a closer connection with the Turkic Tengri, and a farer one with the IE names for thunder gods like the Hittite Tarhun, Germanic Thunar, Celtic Taranis. The non-IE Hattian name for a deity of the same nature was Taru. For me it seems that all these names are somehow onomatopoetic or echoic of the sound of the thunder.

As far as I know the Central Asian peoples had (and still have) many tengri deities/spirits - there was some tengri for almost any particular thing.

As for the infamous "Sumerian connection", so denied by the orthodox scholarship, and so searched for by others, I think the Hungarians are closer to it than the Turks.

Have a look here:

osnyelv.hu/osny0/sumer/hamori_sge.html

www.federatio.org/mi_bibl/AlfredToth_Addendum3_EDH.pdf


I claim nothing.

[ninurta2008]

To be honest, despite my dislike for nostratic theory, there is some quirky similarities going on between Sumerian, Dravidian, Uralic, Turkic, IndoEuropean, and Etruscan (these, because they're what I know of, or at least have some understanding of).

IMO, there seems to be tendacies in the region of Western Eurasia, Northern Africa, and Southwest Asia to be similar. I'm thinking that due to the fact that they've been in contact with one another for so dang long, directly and indirectly, that similarities are bound to occur. Wanderwords and other crosscultural borrowings HAD to be commonplace, at least as far back as 10,000 BCE, when we have evidence of crosscultural borrowings of ideas/things (for instance, using clay tokens in trade).

Also, in words like "wine", there are parallels in Kartvelian and other languages, suggesting that the word was borrowed from someone at some time.

[ihsanerkoc]

Mar 8, 2012 9:15:17 GMT -5 enkur said:

As far as I know the Central Asian peoples had (and still have) many tengri deities/spirits - there was some tengri for almost any particular thing.

Indeed. The Turkic and Mongolic peoples had and still have many Tengris. The concept first seems to have been used only for the material sky initially, but the sky became a religious cult when Turkic peoples started migrating southwards into the Eurasian Steppe Zone in Mongolia and Kazakhstan - before that, they are thought to have been living originally in the forests of southern Siberia. In time, Täŋri became the greatest deity which was the only supernatural being with the ability of creation and it was also thought to be the ruler of all holy beings, a concept close to the God of Semitic-Abrahamic religions - a mixture of Zeus and Ouranos in Greek mythology (both the creator and the king of gods). However, these Turkic nomads also started using the word Täŋri for everything big and/or holy/sacred so in time there appeared numerious Täŋris. Even the Qaghans, nomadic emperors, were called Täŋri Qaghan and Täŋrikän (a variety of Tengri Khan) as attested in Turkic and Tang Chinese sources (the 6th century Iranic Soghdian inscription from Bugut-Mongolia has the Soghdian word βγy, "God", used in front of the titles of Gokturk rulers). The 10th century Abbasid envoy Ibn Fadhlan recorded that the Oghuz Turks used to call each other "God" in respect (here Ibn Fadhlan used the Arabic word Rabb but that must have been a translation of the Turkic word). In his Turkic-Arabic lexion, the 11th century Turkic scholar Mahmud of Kashghar described the word "Täŋri" with three meanings: 1) The Almighty God (here for the Allah of Islam), 2) Material Sky, 3) Everything big or major such as a big mountain or a big tree. Indeed, several Chinese sources compiled between the 7th and 11th centuries tell us that the Gokturks had a sacred mountain which the Chinese recorded the Turkic name as Bo-deng-ning-li 勃登凝黎 (and it's varieties) which ment Di-shen 地神 ("God of Earth") in the Chinese language (here Deng-ning-li stands for Täŋri). Interestingly enough, the Buddhist Uyghurs of 9th-14th centuries sometimes called Buddha Burqan Täŋri. Even today, the Mongols still have 99 different Tengers.