Abstract
THE WORD ‘TÜRK’ IN MANAS EPIC AND TREES, SHEEP / RAM CULTS
Manas Epic contains a thousand-year epic tradition, history, culture and world view of the Turkic world in itself. Therefore, there are many words unused today in modern Turkic languages, in this epic. Some of these words are only included in the pattern texts, said in a particular situations. One of these words is the word Turk. This word used in the historical Turkic languages and classical Turkish literature as a meanings power, strength, strong, beautiful and mature, never seen in Kirghiz Turkish. It is even not pass in other Turkic languages. However, the word Turk is used as a common noun with another lexical comprehension in the Manas Epic. The word Turk in the saga comes to nice and big meanings. The word Turk means beautiful is used in a two repeated pattern texts which reflects the beauty of a place. İn the verses ‘Biri terek, biri tal, Cıgaçının turku uşu (One of poplar, willow one, this is good for the trees)’ the word Turk represents that the poplars and willows are the best of trees. The reason for this is that these trees means cults. Because poplar and willow trees have their own characteristics. For example, blessed girls are sent by God in the Altai epic, descends to earth through the poplar tree. Poplar is blessed place symbol of hope children, begging to God wishlist. The word Turk means big is used in formulaic verses only for sheeps, rams and lambs.
In our article, this case is associated with sheep / ram cults. In our article were examined pattern texts and other words, which pasts with the word Turk. As a result has been shown that the word Türk is associated with tree and sheep / ram cults.
Keywords
Manas Epic, the word Turk, tree cult, sheep / ram cult, poplar.