Alua Tebenova. Besik. 2019.
In Kazakh culture, the term ana, meaning mother, is used to refer to several historical or legendary figures, including saints, matriarchs of certain tribes or clans, and women who held high positions in society. Mazars, or mausoleums, were often erected to honor women such as Domalaq Ana, Begım Ana, Bolğan Ana, Jūban Ana, etc. There are extensive legends about some of these women’s lives, while others are remembered only by their names and memorials. However, in Kazakh tradition, there are also those ‘mothers’ who are purely mythological.
Of course, Kazakh culture has undergone a long process of demythologization, and these figures are often reconstructed from fragmentary information, isolated words, and from the cultures of related peoples.
Mother Fire: Ot Ana
The nearly obscure mythological figure of the Mother Fire has survived in Kazakh ethnographic practices only as a name used in rituals related to female cycles. When a bride, as Kazakh wedding custom dictates, threw a piece of fat or poured oil into the hearth during her first visit to her father-in-law's yurt, women would say, ‘Ot Ana, Mai Ana, jarylqa,’ which means ‘Mother Fire, Mother Mai, bestow your blessing upon us.’ During a difficult childbirth, the woman who was in labor would ‘feed’ the fire with oil and utter, ‘Ot Ana, Mai Ana, jarylqa, künäm bolsa keşe gör, tüiınşegım şeşe gör,’ meaning ‘Mother Fire, Mother Mai, bless me and forgive my sins, untie the knots [for a smooth and fast childbirth]’ (A. Toleubaev). In addition, when the groom, the ūryn, secretly visited the bride's village, he also ‘fed’ the fire in the bride's parents’ yurt, but no specific verbal formulation related to this ritual has been preserved.
The image of Ot Ana is also closely associated with family rituals. In his book Introduction to Kazakh Mythology, S. Kondybay wrote, ‘The Kazakh language has words like “otbasy” (family, literally “head, the beginning of fire”) and “otağasy” (head of the family, literally “the elder brother of the fire”), but there is no tradition to call the wife of the head of the family “ot apasy” or “ot anasy” (literally “elder sister, mother of fire”).’ Nevertheless, the Kazakhs have an abstract concept of a female patron of the family hearth, Ot Ana. The Kazakhs call the process of starting a new family otasu, and the yurt of the newlyweds is called otau. Thus, the fundamental precepts of family life are all associated with fire, ot. Based on this, the researcher proposed a mythological idea that to create a family and a hearth, a man marries not only a woman but also an abstract ‘Mother Fire’. The researcher compared this reconstructed concept with the Scythian concept of Tabiti.
In the third volume of his Mythology of Pre-Kazakhs, S. Kondybay identified five Kazakh fairy tales: ‘Batyr Asan’, ‘Karauyrek’, ‘Mailykarasha’, ‘Akkoyan’, and ‘Opasyz Tuys’ (‘Traitor of the kin’), which shared similar tropes, and he pieced together their meta-plot. In the finale of these tales, the main characters become crippled and are exiled to live with friends far away from society. They usually kidnap a girl who stays with them as a younger sister and runs the household. On one occasion in the tale, the girl accidentally puts the fire out and needs to find a fire source to revive the hearth. In the darkness, she spots a fire nearby and approaches it, encountering an old woman (Jalmauyz, Mystan, an old woman with bird legs). The old woman makes the girl comb her hair while sucking blood from the girl's leg or finger. The old woman sends the girl away with some fire, but follows her discreetly and regularly visits her as she sleeps to feed on her blood. However, the friends catch the old woman, but she promises to heal them if they leave her unharmed. Surprisingly, in order to do so, she swallows them and then vomits them out fully healed. This meta-plot is captivating and is popular among the Turkic-Mongolian peoples, extending up to north Africa with some variations. Without delving into other aspects, it's clear that the elderly woman who grants fire embodies a fantastical rendition of the ancient mythological figure known as Ot Ana or Mother Fire.
Ūmai Ana
Earlier, we discussed the bride tending to the hearth and the woman giving birth, both of whom invoked Mother Fire for assistance. Now, let's also talk about Mai Ana, the Kazakh name for the ancient goddess Ūmai. The first Kazakh linguist Kudaibergen Zhubanov (1899−1938) wrote, ‘The Kazakh language preserved the name of Ūmai in the form of “Mai Ana” or “Mai Mother”.’
In the Turkic Khaganate, Ūmai, along with Tengri and İer-Sub (known as Jer Su in Kazakh, meaning earth and water), constituted one of the great divine triads. In the Kultegin monument, the queen katun is compared with Ūmai. The inscription in honor of Tonyukuk reads, ‘Tengri, Ūmai, and the sacred İer-Sub, this is them who likely bestowed this victory’. Thus, Ūmai, along with the other deities, grants victory and serves as the protector of warriors. Researchers compare these fragmentary references about the goddess Ūmai in the ancient Turkic texts with ethnographic data about Ūmai gathered from Siberian and Central Asian Turks. S. Kondybay believed that during the proto-Turkic period, Ūmai existed as a separate deity known as the Great Mother. However, the transformation of Ūmai into Tengri’s wife within the pair ‘father-heaven, mother-earth’ can be associated specifically with the Turkic era. It would be more accurate to perceive the mythological ideas about ‘Ūmai,’ or ‘Tengri, and Ūmai’ portrayed in the texts dated to the Orkhon-Yenisei period and later not as original and primordial but as the ones formed in a specific historical period.
In later medieval Uyghur texts (such as the sutra Golden Splendor and some Turfan texts) and in the dictionary of M. Kashgarsky, Ūmai is not mentioned as a shamanistic deity. However, the word ‘Ūmai’ appears in these texts carrying the meaning of ‘placenta’ and ‘mother's womb’ (Potapov, 1991: 285). In Kazakh, the word ‘Ūmai’ with the meaning of ‘placenta’ has not been preserved, and instead, joldas (companion, fetal membrane or qağanaq) is used. This oblivion and replacement of ‘Ūmai’ with the secular word joldas may be linked to taboos. In Kazakh, however, there is a similar word, ūma, meaning ‘scrotum’.
Although in the eleventh-century dictionary by Mahmud Kashgari the term ‘Ūmai’ loses its status as a proper name, it persisted as the protector of infants and women in labor among various contemporary Turkic communities, including Muslims, up until the twentieth century. The remarkable persistence of this image can only be explained by the deep-rooted cult of Ūmai in the folk environment and the conservatism of female cults. According to the information provided by T. Mukanova-Mendosheva, an honored figure of the Republic of Altai, the Altai people effectively associate Ūmai Ana, at least in contemporary perception, with Ot Ana. Judging by the phrase ‘Ot Ana, Mai Ana’, one can assume that among the Kazakhs during the ethnographic period, a similar superimposition of the two previously distinct images occurred.
Saba Ana
The symbolism of the vessel, particularly those used to cook food, has deep roots as a representation of the mother and the mother's womb, not only in mythology but also in the collective unconscious of modern people. Although the concept of the vessel as an image of the Great Mother may have lost some significance among the Kazakhs over time, it can still be reconstructed based on language and folklore related to various kitchen utensils, such as the kazan, frying pans and especially the saba (Z. Naurzbayeva).
The saba is a large, sacred wineskin used to ferment koumiss and curdled milk, also known as ırkıt. In some cases, the main product that emerges from the saba is churned butter accompanied with fat-free curdled milk used to make kurt. Like other kitchen utensils, the saba was typically placed in the part of the yurt utilized most by women. However, as an exception, it could sometimes be kept in the male half. The saba symbolized the prosperity and wealth of the family and the clan.
The saba was crafted in a form resembling a square pyramid, with the upper emizdik suspended from the upper tip of the yurt's sidewall (kerege). The saba aiaq (waterskin legs) was a square wooden stand featuring four legs, serving as a support. The terminology associated with the saba also gives it an anthropomorphic quality, with words like auyz (mouth) that defines the hole in the upper part of the wineskin, moiyn (neck) for the narrow part below the hole, and emizdik (a bottle with a nipple for feeding an infant or young, which is derived from emizu, which means to breastfeed) for the four upper and bottom corners.
Researchers S. Kondybay and A. Kazhgali Uly reconstructed a saba based on Turkic mythology to understand how it was used and its significance. A huge saba was made from the skins of five mares, and although impractical for daily use due to its size, it was used for various rituals and had a prestigious significance. It resembled a tetrahedral pyramid, or the World Mountain, which is a symbol of the Great Mother. Churning milk using the saba is reminiscent of the Indian myth of churning the ocean using a mountain as a pestle to extract the elixir of immortality. For pastoralists, the act of shaking milk using a wineskin (also called pispek or piskek in Kyrgyz) was of vital importance, so much so that it became the basis for the name of Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek (previously known as Pishpek). The Turks regarded whipping milk using a saba as a cosmogonic act, almost like giving birth to the cosmos itself, where the saba symbolized the feminine and maternal beginning.
Even today, a popular expression about a portly woman goes as follows: ‘Bes bienıñ sabasyndai bäibışe,’ meaning ‘The elder wife is like a saba made from the skins of five mares.’ This comparison carries a positive connotation, reminiscent of the Paleolithic Venus sculptures and highlights the enduring significance of the Great Mother's symbolism in Kazakh culture.
Qaiyñ Ana
Traditionally, the Turks viewed the World Tree as a pair of male and female trees, where the birch symbolized the female tree. The idea of a nurturing birch was preserved among the Siberian Turks, and in certain epics, a birch tree feeds a baby left in the forest with its milky juices. Although the Kazakhs may have forgotten this trope, echoes of it can be found in the name of the kuyi (musical composition) by the eighteenth-century composer Baizhigit, titled Qaiyñ Sauğan (Milking of a Birch).
The ancient Turks associated the concept of tör with the state, order, law, power, the World Tree, and the Milky Way. In some dialects, tör sounded like tös, which means ‘sternum’ or ‘chest’. In the eleventh century, M. Kashgari noted the similarity between the words for birch, qaiyñ, and relatives from the wife’s side, kaiyn. In addition, S. Kondybay traces the etymology of these words back to the word katyn, which means ‘wife’ or ‘woman’.
Qoibas Ana
The image of ‘Mother, the Sheep's Head’ is a half-forgotten figure from ancient mythology, and our knowledge of it comes from the work of writer and musician Talasbek Asemkulov. Qoibas Ana, the younger sister of the legendary Qorkyt, holds a significant place in folklore. While Qorkyt is revered both as the inventor of the string instrument ‘qyl kobyz’ and as the patron of kobyz music (as well as the patron of shamans), his younger sister, Qoibas Ana, is the patron of dombra music. Not only does she bestow her blessings on dombra players, but she also infuses the dombras that belong to the most skilled musicians with spirits (souls).
Interestingly, there is a typological similarity between the image of Qoibas Ana and the one of the princess of the kingdom from beneath the sea, who has a pig's head, in Celtic mythology, who is also associated with music. In the Kazakh context, Qoibas Ana is depicted as a woman with a sheep's head or wearing a ram's horns on her head. This image resembles the medieval female Turkic-Mongolian horned headgear and the female stone sculptures of Polovtsy (Cumans) featuring hairstyles in the form of a ram’s horns.
As you might have noticed, mythological characters such as Ot Ana, Ūmai Ana, Saba Ana and Qaiyñ Ana are all mother figures whose children remain unknown. Nevertheless, they hold significant roles as protectors of the family hearth, women, and childbirth. Similarly, Qoibas Ana plays a crucial role in the realm of music and musicians. The next category of female characters in Kazakh mythology is equally fascinating, however more colorful and better-known owing to fairy tales—the kempır (old women).