Abstract
OTHER WORLD”S IN THE KAZAN-TATAR TURKS FOLK NARRATIVES: UNDERWORLD, UNDERWATER, SKY AND DARK FOREST
The subjects such as how the world was formed, and how it is perceived and how many layers it consists of play an important role in Turkic mythology. The commonly held view in Turkic world relating to the perception of the world is that the sky is a semi-circle dome and the earth has four corners with eight directions. In the mythological conception of the world, the world has four sides as East, West, North and South in horizontal plane; and it consists of three layers as the sky (up), the earth (middle) and underworld (down) in vertical plane. The notion of a three-layered world consisting of the sky, the earth and the underworld is also seen in the mythology of Tatar-Turks. In the examples of epic, legend and tales of the folk narratives of Kazan-Tatars, of all these three worlds, mainly the worlds of the earth and the underground have been largely dealth with. Apart from these worlds, realms of existence of different life forms like the underwater, the dark forest, and the kingdom of the sun and the moon are also mentioned. The worlds of the “sky”, the “underworld” and the “underwater” in particular, are described as “the second world”s apart from the world in which people inhabited. These worlds which do not differ much from the earth in the world view of Kazan-Tatars are perceived as being close to and connected to each other and however they are similar to the earth they also seem to be more beautiful or frightening. The events that take place in the narratives usually start on earth which is the world inhabited in a circular cycle and continue in the other worlds, and ends up on earth again. A great variety of functions have been attributed to the other worlds which have been mostly stated as “kingdoms”. This study has two goals; The first one is to reveal the appearance of the notions with regard to the mythological conception of the world in the mythology of Kazan-Tatars with examples from the narratives such as epics, legends and tales; the other one is to examine the mythical qualities and functions of all the realms of existence apart from the earth such as the “underworld”, the “underwater”, the “sky” and the “dark forest” that we describe as the other worlds.
Keywords
Turkic Mythology, Mythological Conception of the World, Other World, Kazan-Tatars, Folk Narratives