TRACES OF SHAMANISM IN BAYBURT DIALECT
BAYBURT AĞZINDA KAMLIK İZLERİ

Author : Ahmet AKPINAR
Number of pages : 1-19

Abstract

When it comes to Turkish cultural history we must mention the old Turkish religion and the belief system. Because, the nomad lifestyle of the Turks had designated their envision of life and believes, too. Communities of Turk, who got in contact with various religions and dominated in many regions throughout their history, not only adopted the religious systems they got influenced by, but also they had preserved their national and religional believes. Comparative folklore and linguistics studies demonstrate that ancient Turkish believes and traditions stemmed actually from Turkish religions and Shamanism. Some of them failed to preserve its religious context and turned out be unharmful daily traditions in the society, however mostly these traditions were adopted as if they belonged to Islam and reverted to changes that are harmful to our national identity. Linguistically, these tradition and believes used in Shamanic period transformed into some word with special meanings which express superstition or into everyday words, losing their meanings, yet preserved their existence for centuries. Thanks to comparative folklore and linguistics studies in Turkey progress, important findings can be obtained about the role of some words in Turkish culturel history and about their semantics progress from historical texts. It is indeed necessary to study the culturel history in order to make analysis with strong sources and obtain in the accurate results in semantic research. In this study, the words ‘uçuk, kaş, yağırnı, saçı, yalpala-’ that are still in use in Bayburt dialect. Firstly, it is determined synchronic meaning of these words in General Turkish and Bayburt dialect; secondly, diachronic semantics progress of these words in the oldest historical texts that are compared. Finally, it is determined the fundamental meaning and function of the words by clarifing their roles in Turkish shamanism. As a result, it has been determined they had a significant role in Shamanism. The word ‘saçı’, in Bayburt region, is used for representing a special meaning within marriage customs after it lost its original religious meaning by the influence of Islam. The same goes for the words ‘uçuk, yalpala-, kaş, yağırnı’. These words also turned into words in everyday language bu losing their religious meaning completely.

Keywords

Bayburt dialect, Turkey Turkish dialects, Synchronic semantics, Diachronic semantics, Shamanism.

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