Alua Tebenova. Tengri. 2022.
They often ask me why all the negative characters in Kazakh folklore are women. This is not entirely true—there are also negative male characters, as seen in the fairy tale ‘Qorqau Şal’ (‘The Wicked Old Man’), where the main character devours his newborn children. But it is also true that old women called Mystañ and Jalmauyz, the woman with copper claws known as jeztyrnaq, and the woman who steals the lungs from mothers giving birth called albasty are among the most colorful figures in Kazakh demonology.
The prevalence of negative female figures is not only related to the patriarchal nature society and an unconscious fear of feminine energy but also, paradoxically, rooted in the veneration of the feminine principle by our ancestors. In the histories of most religions, a clear pattern is visible: the gods or benevolent forces of the old religion often transform into demons after a change of faith. Since our ancestors revered goddesses, Kazakh culture developed a rich female demonology. To gain a better understanding of this, let us explore the most prominent embodiment of evil in Kazakh folklore.
Mystañ Kempir
The old woman Mystañ is often likened to the Russian Baba Yaga. Cunning, cruel, and ambitious, she is frequently portrayed both as the advisor to the khan of a neighboring country and, of course, as the enemy of the hero of a tale. She lures the hero into traps, kidnaps children, and manipulates the hero's younger sister or wife into doing her bidding, sending the hero on deadly quests. Sometimes, she does this to arrange a marriage between her own unattractive son and the khan's daughter. However, upon closer examination, the character of Mystañ is ambivalent. Despite her evil machinations, like Baba Yaga, she is also capable of performing good deeds, including adopting the hero as her own child/family, becoming his advisor, and helping him achieve his goals.
Descriptions of Mystañ, when they come to light, are often comical and absurd: she is depicted as having horns, bent over with a mangled back, that is., wool matted like felt, and having a crow-like beak and claws. In fact, old women capable of magic in Kazakh fairy tales may also have bony jaws, owl-like eyes (reminiscent of the owl-eyed Hellenic Athena), swan-like or bony heads, and limbs resembling paws. They can transform into different animals, including a colorful mare, a red fox, or a rock pigeon, etc. These descriptions most likely blend remnants of various forgotten mythological ancestral mothers and totemic mothers, showing both animal and bird features. Her horns, passed down to Mystañ from a horned animal, still symbolize wisdom, fame, happiness, and success in Kazakh culture. In the epic Alpamys, Khan Taishik addresses the 180-year-old Mystañ directly, saying, ‘You are an ancient seer.’ The description of Mystañ characterizes her as an indigenous and wise being, a priestess of an ancient cult, having centuries of wisdom.
The structural and semantic analysis of various versions of the Alpamys epic led me to believe that Mystañ represents the shadow aspect of the hero's mother. Additionally, their names share the same root. The anthroponym Alpamys comprises two parts: alp/alyb, meaning ‘giant’, and ‘mys’. The root mys in many batyrs’ names is homonymous with the first part of the name Mystañ. In fact, in the epics of other Turkic peoples, one can find main characters with images parallel to those of Alpamys, such as Bamsy-Bairaq, Manas, and Manğys.
In modern Kazakh, the morpheme mys carries meanings like ‘copper’ and ‘desire, hope, aspiration to act, and authority’. In this case, authority is a power based on the presence of some invisible force (refer to expressions like ‘mysy basty’ or ‘mysy kurydy’, where someone's mys suppresses the mys of another person). In Alpamys, the eponymous main character’s mother is named Analyq, which translates to ‘motherhood’ and may also suggest a ‘named mother,’ akin to atalyq, meaning ‘nuptial father or mentor’.
In some ancient religions, homonymous names were common for dual male–female deities, such as pairs of divine twins, and are associated with the creation of the world and humanity through the themes of incest, mother and son/husband relationships, and more. It is possible that during the most archaic period, Mystañ and Alpamys formed such a divine couple.
Indeed, the name Mystañ strongly suggests that she was a deity associated with the spirit of copper mining. For example, in Zhezkazgan, copper has been smelted since ancient times, starting from the Begazy-Dandybay period (eighth and ninth centuries BCE) and continuing up to the present day, making her name of great significance in this context.
Jalmauyz Kempir
In Kazakh folklore, the character of Mystañ can only be rivaled by Jalmauyz Kempir, a man-eating old woman, in popularity. Jalmauyz means ‘a devouring mouth’ or ‘an abyss’, and in some tales, this old woman is described vividly, capturing prisoners one after another, chaining them together and frying them in a huge cauldron with forty handles, stirring them with a ladle. However, upon closer examination, it also appears that Jalmauyz can be either an old woman or a dwarf ergezheilі (old man), whose height is about a vershok (1⅓ inches) and whose beard is as long as forty vershoks. Jalmauyz can also take many forms, including a giant däu. Hapless victims get swallowed not only by Jalmauyz but also by a dragon or a huge snake and even a gigantic bird. All these forms may have two, three, seven, nine, or even seventy heads, and they might be one-eyed, which indicates their common origin. When a hero chops Jalmauyz’s heads off, one after another, one of those numerous heads may roll down into a well, returning to its underground world. Finally, the character Jalmauyz Kempir refers to a mythological figure that is difficult to comprehend fully. It could possibly personify death or the grave, or fire, or time.
In any case, both Mystañ and Jalmauyz can be categorized as ‘slain deities’, as described by M. Eliade. The essence of this image is that a supernatural being kills people for the purpose of initiation; not understanding the meaning of this being’s actions, people kill it, and thus gain some secret knowledge, skills, or rituals. In these rituals, the slain creature is present in a symbolic form.
The Heavenly Old Woman, Köklen
In the previous lecture, we discussed Qūrtqa, the wife of the epic hero Qoblandy, and her mother, the old woman Köklen (or Kökten). The ancient nature of this character drew the attention of Alikhan Bukeikhan, the leader of Alash Orda (the provisional Kazakh government that operated between 1917–18), who said this about her: ‘Qūrtqa’s mother Kökten Kempir is an obvious representative of paganism; she is indeed some mythical creature.’ In various versions of the Qoblandy epic where Köklen appears, her aristocratic lineage is always emphasized along with her remarkable abilities to foresee the future and practice sorcery and shapeshift, often taking the form of a fox.
In one version of the tale, she is described as having one leg, a characteristic of water-related beings associated with dragon or serpent mythology motifs. Across all versions of the epic, Köklen bestows her blessings upon her son-in-law, the hero Qoblandy, in the form of clouds that transform into food, drink, bridges, armies, and whatever he requires when the need arises. The image and the name of the goddess Köklen, as elucidated by E.D. Tursunov, the renowned folklorist, can be traced back to the Yuezhi, a nomadic people who lived in the first millennium BCE in the territory of the Huns (modern-day western China).
Perhaps the cloud blessing–bestowing sorceress Köklen is the same nameless old woman mentioned by Chokan Valikhanov: ‘Among the heavenly Kyrgyz, there is a very rich old woman (the image of riches of life of the heavenly inhabitants is definitely Kyrgyz of origin, it could not be of any other since these riches are the essence of Kyrgyz imagination). The rainbow is her kosag (halter rope) for the herd of colored sheep, which the old woman has a habit of milking after the rain’ (Valikhanov, p. 307).
Similar beliefs exist among other Turkic-Mongolian peoples. Based on various Turkic folklore and a comparative analysis with the ancient Iranian image of Ardvisura Anahita, S. Kondybay reconstructs the image of Köklen (or Kökten) as an ancient Turkic goddess of fertility, a protector of women in labor, infants, and young girls—future mothers. This goddess resides in the heavens, she milks her sheep and mares there, the rain is the spilt milk of her animals, the thunder is the neighing of a heavenly stallion, and the rainbow serves as the halter rope to hold her heavenly sheep together in a herd.
Sinologist and Turkologist Zuev Y. argued that the Chinese goddess Sivanmu, the queen mother of the west, can be traced back to the image of Köklen, which the Chinese borrowed from the Yuezhi or Huns. The Turkmen folklore preserved the image of a roaring old woman who produces thunder by shaking her leather wineskin or leather trousers (Mother Saba, or the mother-wineskin mentioned in the previous lecture, is Köklen’s hypostasis).
A Look at the Word ‘Kempir’
In the modern Kazakh language, the word kempir is translated as ‘an old woman’ or ‘an elderly woman’. Academician A. Konyratbayev also associated the etymology of kempir with qam pir, where qam means shaman, an ancient Turkic word used in Eastern Kazakhstan. It was derived from the Old Turkic word qamla, which translates as ‘to perform a shamanic ritual’. The word pir is a Sufi term of Iranian origin, meaning ‘spiritual mentor or supernatural protector’ (Konyratbayev 1987, p. 181).
The word is also present in the Tajik language: ‘Kampir is an old woman or grandmother, who in Tajik mythology represents female spirits personifying natural phenomena. According to various beliefs, Kampir can produce thunder by shaking her trousers, or spinning the milk-churn, or even striking the drum’ (Mythological Dictionary, p. 275). Presumably, the word kempir or kampir originally meant the female personification of natural events or the ruler of the elements, and only later acquired the modern meaning of an old woman.
In Tajik folklore, there is a character known as Kampiri Maston, who bears a strong resemblance to Mystañ Kempir. There is also a character called Kampir Odjuz, who is associated with winter, frost, and cold winds. The Tajik word odjuz can easily be traced to the Turkic word ayaz, which means ‘frost’ and is related to Ayaz Ata (Father Frost), the character directly derived from the Soviet Ded Moroz, whereas the character of Ayaz Kempir has been long forgotten by the Kazakhs.
In Soviet and Russian mythology, the word kempir and the old women personifying natural phenomena are considered to have been borrowed by the Turks from the Tajiks. However, it is strange that in the main Indo-European myth, according to the theory by V.N. Toporov and V.V. Ivanov, the primary conflict is between the male deity of thunder and the serpent, whereas in both Tajik and Turkmen folklore, the focus is on an old woman, the creator of thunder. Our Köklen was also probably a thunder-maker since she controls the zhai bulty, or the thunderclouds.
In the previous lecture, we discussed Ot Ana (the Fire Mother) who appears in the tales as Mystañ Kempir or Zhalmayuz Kempir (the process of demythologization among the Turks has reached the point where once distinct characters have blended together). S. Kondybay also reconstructs in his works the image of Su Ana (the Water Mother). This old woman should not be confused with the Swan Maiden or the water spirit su perisi. In various tales and epics, a certain old woman, who can be called Mystañ Kempir or Zhalmayuz Kempir, and who is often the mother of giants and dives, or any other enemies of the main hero, finally adopts the hero and helps him find and fight for his bride.
S. Kondybay writes in his works: ‘This old woman is also associated with water: she can float on the water's surface, or push kids into water; she can submerge by tying stones to her feet; she can throw the keeper of the hero's soul, his sword, far out into the lake; she invites and helps the bride into a boat to get to the hero she protects, and so on. There is enough evidence and data to reconstruct the mythological image of this old woman. She is an ancient female deity associated with water, or the underwater world, or the other realm, who bestows children and brides upon the chosen ones. We call her “Qal äje” or “ Grandmother Qala”.
Malik Floberuly. Sketch of the tapestry "Under the eternal sky of the blue She-wolf"
Thus, based on the tales of Kazakh folklore, at least three images of old women personifying natural elements were restored: the celestial Köklen, the Fire Mother, and the Water Mother. Judging by how the toponym bes kempir (five old women) is widely spread in Kazakhstan and the existence of childbirth rituals where three, five, seven, or nine old women participate, it is possible to assume that there were more such figures. Whether Mystañ and Jalmauyz were a part of this sacred number is unknown.