Ashina tribe
The Ashina were a Turkic tribe and the ruling dynasty of the Göktürks. They rose to prominence in the mid-6th century when the leader, Bumin Qaghan, revolted against the Rouran Khaganate. The two main branches of the family, one descended from Bumin and the other from his brother Istämi, ruled over the eastern and western parts of the Göktürk confederation, respectively, forming the First Turkic Khaganate.
Origin
Primary Chinese sources ascribed different origins to the Ashina tribe. They were first attested to 439, as reported by the Book of Sui: on the 18th day of the 10th month, the Tuoba ruler Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei overthrew Juqu Mujian of the Northern Liang in eastern Gansu, and 500 Ashina families fled northwest to the Rouran Khaganate near Gaochang.According to the Book of Zhou, History of the Northern Dynasties, and the New Book of Tang, the Ashina clan was a component of the Xiongnu confederation, but this is contested. The Göktürks were also posited as having originated from an obscure Suo state, north of the Xiongnu. According to the Book of Sui and the Tongdian, they were "mixed barbarians" from Pingliang.
According to some researchers the Ashina tribe descended from the Tiele confederation, who were likewise associated with the Xiongnu. Like the Göktürks, the Tiele were a Turkic tribal confederation on the steppe. However, Lee & Kuang state that Chinese histories did not describe the Ashina-led Göktürks as descending from the Dingling or belonging to the Tiele confederation. The name "Ashina" was recorded in ancient Muslim chronicles in these forms: Aśnas, Ānsa, Śaba, Śana, Śaya.
Etymology
Indo-European
Several researchers, including Peter B. Golden, H. W. Haussig, S. G. Klyashtorny, Carter V. Findley, D. G. Savinov, B. A. Muratov, S. P. Guschin, and András Róna-Tas have posited that the term Ashina ultimately descends from an Indo-European root, possibly Tocharian or one of Eastern Iranic languages, such as the Saka. Jonathan Ratcliffe also supports this theory.Carter V. Findley assumes that the name "Ashina" comes from one of the Saka languages of central Asia and means "blue". The color blue is identified with the east, so that Göktürk, another name for the Turkic empire, meant the "Turks of the East"; meanwhile, Peter Benjamin Golden favours a more limited denotation of Göktürks as denoting only the Eastern Turks. Findley also said that the term böri, used to identify the ruler's retinue as 'wolves', probably also derived from one of the Iranian languages.
H. W. Haussig and S. G. Kljyashtorny suggest an association between the name and the compound "kindred of Ashin" ahşaẽna. This is so even in East Turkestan; then the desired form would be in the Sogdian 'xs' yn' k "blue, dark"; Khotan-Saka āşşeiņa "blue", where a long -ā- emerged as development ahş-> āşş-; in Tocharian A āśna- "blue, dark". There is textual support for either of these versions in the Göktürk Orkhon inscriptions, in which the Göktürks are described as the "Blue Turks"; being descended from the marriage between Blue Sky and the Brown Earth.
According to Kuastornyj, the perfect translation of "Ashina" as an Indo-European word meaning "blue" indicates that the Türks of the First Turkic Khaganate period may aware of the non-Türkic origin of the name "Ashina." In this hypothesis of Louis Bazin, this knowledge was being suppressed in the Second Turkic Khaganate period by the Türkic nationalist policies of Bilge Qaghan.
Turkic or East Asian
reconstructs the Chinese transcription 阿史那's Middle Chinese pronunciation as *’âṣinâ, which he derives from Turkic *ašïn, further from Proto-Turkic root *aš-, referring to the origin legend wherein the wolf-descended Turks had to cross mountains. Boodberg additionally derives the Middle Chinese transcription 阿史那 *’âṣitək from this same root *aš-, immediately through *aşıd-.Japanese Sinologist and historian Kurakichi Shiratori suggested that Ashina comes from *Esh- in Proto-Turkic. Christopher I. Beckwith reads the word Ashina as a Turkic name Arslan, based on Byzantine historian Menander Protector's record that “the name of the earliest rulers of the Turks was Arsilas” meaning that Ashina may have been an earlier form or a Chinese corrupted form of Arslan.
Based on Chinese sources' testament that the Ashina, upon becoming the head of Turks, exhibited a tuğ banner with a wolf head over their gate in reminiscence of its origins,
the name "Ashina" is translated by Boodberg as "wolf", cf. Tuoba 叱奴 *čino, Middle Mongol činua, Khalkha čono. Gumilev, on the other hand, considered 阿 as a prefix, a respect marker placed before a name, and accepted 'shih-na' as činua, just as Boodberg did; thus, he concluded that A-shih-na means "noble wolf." Nevertheless, Golden contends that derivation from Mongolic is mistaken.
On the Khor-Asgat inscription, the form Ašїnas is written and is similar to the Sogdian form Ašinas from the Bugut and Karabalgasun steles and the Arabic forms Ašinās and Ašnās from medieval Islamic sources. Reasoning that Chinese editors usually avoided the coda /-s/, Takashi Ōsawa hypothetically derives the family name Ašїnas from their tribal ancestress's name *A-ši-na and the final element -as, which he explains as a plural suffix " + suffix - as proposed by Marquart, Melioranskii and others.
He further links *A-ši-na to the Xiongnu title 閼氏, which was pronounced *′ât-zie in Late Middle Chinese, meant "wife of a ruler", and might be derived from *aš / eš, *azhi / *ezhi < *ašïn / *ešin, and *azhïn / *ezhin, further from Tungusic *Aši < *asun / *asi < *hasun < *khasu < *kasun < *katsun and Turko-Mongolic *Ači < ačun < *hatun < khatun < katun.
Legends
Chinese chroniclers recorded four origin tales, which Golden termed "Wolf Tale I", "Wolf Tale II", "Shemo and the Deer Tale" and "Historical Account", of the Turks in dynasty histories and historical compilations "based on or copied from the same source and repeated in later collections of historical tales".- Wolf Tale I: Ashina was one of ten sons born to a grey she-wolf in the north of Gaochang.
- Wolf Tale II: The ancestor of the Ashina was a man from the Suo nation whose mother was a lupine season goddess.
- Shemo and the Deer Tale: The Ashina descended from a skilled archer named Shemo, who had once fallen in love with a sea goddess west of Ashide cave.
- Historical Account: The Ashina were mixture stocks from the Pingliang commandery of eastern Gansu.
The record of Turks in Zhoushu describes the use of gold by Turks around the mid-fifth century:
" put gold sculpture of wolf head on their tuğ banner; their military men were called Fuli, that is, wolf in Chinese. It is because they are descendants of the wolf, and naming so is for not forgetting their ancestors."
According to Klyashtorny, the origin myth of Ashina shared similarities with the Wusun, although there is a significant difference that, whereas in the Wusun myth the wolf saves the ancestor of the tribe, it is not as in the case of the Turks. He also adds that Turk system of beliefs linking at least some sections of the Turk ruling class to the Sogdians and, beyond them, to the Wusun.
Funeral rite
The Chronicle of Northern Zhou describes the funeral rites of the Ashina. The deceased were laid to rest in a tent, and animals would be sacrificed around the tent. Relatives of the deceased would ride horses around the tent and ritualistically cut themselves about the face as a display of mourning, or "blood tears". The individual and their belongings would then be incinerated.According to D. G. Savinov, no burials have been found in South Siberia nor Central Asia that are fully consistent with the description of Ashina burials.
According to D. G. Savinov this may be for several reasons:
- Göktürk burial sites in Central Asia and Southern Siberia are not yet open;
- The source is a compilation in character, and burial rituals and funeral cycle from various sources are listed in a unified manner;
- Göktürk funeral rites in the form in which they are recorded in written sources, developed later on the basis of the various components present in some of the archaeological sites of Southern Siberia of earlier Turkic cultures.
Physical appearance
According to the Book of Zhou and the History of the Northern Dynasties, the Ashina clan was related to the "Yenisei Kyrgyz", who resided near the Pamir mountains and are described as possessing red hair and blue eyes in the New Book of Tang, a description previously used to describe the Wusun. However according to Lee & Kuang, the Göktürks differed from the Kyrgyz in their physiognomy and "no comparable depiction of the Kök Türks or Tiele is found in the official Chinese histories."Lee & Kuang state that the most likely explanation for the West Eurasian physiognomy of the Yenisei Kyrgyz is a high frequency of the Eurasian Indo-European haplogroup R1a-Z93. It remains debated whether these frequencies reflect early Turkic peoples were Europid in appearance. Today, predominantly Asian Turkic groups such as Kyrgyz, a descendant of the Yenisei Kirghiz have one of the highest frequencies of R1a, with over 63% of the population while R1a-Z93 is most common in the Altai people in Russia.
The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang visited the western Göktürk capital Suyab in modern-day Kyrgyzstan and left a description of the Ashina Tong:
The khan wore a green satin robe; his hair, which was ten feet long, was free. A band of white silk wound round his forehead and hung down behind. The ministers of the presence, numbering two hundred in number, all wearing embroidered robes, stood on his right and left. The rest of his military retinue clothed in fur, serge and fine wool, the spears and standards and bows in order, and the riders of camels and horses stretched far out of .20th-century Chinese historian Xue Zongzheng claimed original Ashina members had physical features similar to Sogdians was by the time of Qilibi Khan, an eighth generation descendant of Bumin Qaghan, presented as a sign of mixed ancestry among the Ashina.
However, both Shibi Khan and Heshana Qaghan were doubtful of Qilibi being Ashina because he resembled a Sogdian more than a Göktürk which prevented him from being a shad.
This hypothesis was not supported by general consensus. DNA studies on early members of the Ashina family revealed that they were exclusively East Asian. Muqan Qaghan, the third qaghan of the First Turkic Khaganate, was described by Chinese authors as having an unusual appearance. He had eyes like "colored glazes", he had a very red complexion, and his face was over a foot wide.