Cultural Influence on Turkmenia from Western Asia

We have seen how Mongolian late Neolithic culture and its successors in the Far East influenced the Mongolians who came down from the Altai mountains and established a Greater Turkmenia than the lands we now know as the 'stans of Central Asia, primarily are discussing the Turkmen who live in Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.

For today's topic let's consider the cultural influence from the West.  In fact, this culture was already there when the Turkmen began to move onto the desert oases in late antiquity, some time after 400 A.D.  There they found the remnants of the Greco-Persian kingdom of Bactria in Afghanistan and in Turkmenistan the Turkmen might have found a few people left from the ruins of the Indo-Iranian Margiana settlement that was closely related to the Bactrians.  Once the Turkoman herders settled in watered areas, they would have begun to find the ritual objects of the early Greek, Persian and Indian cultures.  In Bactria, there was still an Indo-Iranian-Buddhist culture that had reigned as the Kushans, or at least they would have found the huge amounts of cultural remains of it.  The monumental statues of Buddha in Bamiyan come to mind here.  But there was much, much more.  So much more that both archeologists and 'prospectors' are still finding the relics of that culture constantly.

But let's see what I mean when I say that the Bactria-Margiana culture that came from at least as far West as Anatolia (now Turkey, another home of the Turkmen).  But the Turks did not conquer as far West as Turkey until after 1200 A.D.   So when the first Mongol Turks came out of the Altai mountains in the Northern Steppes of Central Asia, they found the successor societies to Bactria and Margiana still steeped in much of the culture of the former residents.

Let us compare a cultural symbol of modern Afghan Turkomans, descended through the Kazakhs of Afghanistan.  It is inscribed on the back of a pendant made in the early part of the twentieth century, around 1930 or 40, I estimate.  Here is the photo and the link to the page that shows the front panel of the pendant:

More about this pendant HERE.

You will see that the figure is a circle of rhomboid shapes with a very faint circle in the middle.  The rhombus circle is so arranged that the eight shapes allow a straight line horizontally and vertically, making the + sign.  Then their arrangement allows one to make a diametrical X along the lines of the rhomboid shapes.  This suggests the symbols on the Bactrian stamp seals on which I find what I believe are meditation images that the Indo-Iranian, especially the Hindi culture, adopted as early as the Late Bronze Age, around 1,500 B. C. and evn earlier.  In the Hindi cultures, they are now called mandalas.   I have a collection of many of them.

Here is an example with just a slight difference in appearance, but a very important difference when understanding that the Mongol Turks never became much like Bactrians.  I believe they only assumed a few acculturations such as making certain images in wood, clay and metal.

Here is the photo and the link to more information on the Bactrian stamp seal

More information available HERE.

You will note that while the Turkoman inscribed design in the first photo above invites the line of sight to travel between the rhomboid shapes, the Bactrian casts the metal stamp seal so the eye follows the same distribution of lines -- horizontal, vertical and diametric -- but the eye begins at the point of the rhombuses and travels to the opposite rhombus tip, no matter whether the line is horizontal, vertical or diametric.  

We see the same distribution of eight shapes, shapes that are hauntingly similar, though the early molds for casting copper and bronze were not nearly as exact at making points as a stylus engraver can be in inscribing the silver pendant.  

I hope this proposition has been at least a bit entertaining, though not scientific.  I invite you to my online shop for the story behind many, many things in my rich collection that I am now selling.  You will find a warm welcome and a ready correspondent at CraftsofthePast.artfire.com

The Champion Wears the Bazuband

In Mongolia, the nation's hundredth anniversary was celebrated on horseback.  The buzkashi games were played in many venues.  Buzkashi is still a popular sport in many parts of Greater Turkmenia, that is in all the places where the Turkic peoples influence the culture.  Northern Afghanistan is such a place.  

Buzkashi is the oldest sport played on horseback.  It is the national sport of Afghanistan.  The horses are highly prized and are well-trained and well cared for. The champion, or Chapandaz, earns his award, the bazuband, to wear laced on his arm.  His chapan is also part of his award.  He wears the chapan, a handwoven silk robe, draped on his shoulders as you see in the photo below of President Hamid Karzai. 

   

And on his arm the champion laces his beautifully worked silver bracelet that looks like the photo to the right of Karzai's photo:  the bazuband, the champion's bracelet for                                               

the Afghan buzkashi winner, just as it was for the ancient Persian archer champion, from which the tradition is carried on.  

The bazuband was a carryover from the ancient Iranians, or Persians, who fought their wars on horseback.  Often the battles would end with many horseless riders fighting hand-to-hand combat, a kind of no holds barred wrestling.  The heroes from the winning side of the battle were awarded the prize of a bazuband not only for their skill in archery but for their skill in wrestling.  

A buzkashi field is laid out with a tall post at one end and a circle painted onto the ground at the other.  Inside the circle, the administrator of justice, the referee, has placed the carcass of a headless goat, gutted, but now filled with sand.  The members of each team parade onto the field in tribal regalia, wearing their padded chapans and beautifully embroidered padded helmets.  When I saw the game in Kabul in 1974, many of the team members wore their hair in the traditional Mongolian queue.  

                                                             This is a game in action

The game begins with a judge deciding which team will pick up the goat carcass, the equivalent of our pigskin football, but larger and heavier, but easier to grasp than a wet football.  The team has already chosen their man who will pick up the goat.  Now the rest of the team must fend off the opposing team members while the man holding the goat carries it round the post at the far end of the field from where he picked up the headless carcass that you see the man in the white horse carrying in the photo above.  

After he passes round that post, he heads pell mell down the field to the circle of justice, into which he hopes to toss the goat.  His journey is not easy, neither going up the field to go round the post, nor when it grows much more difficult as he starts back toward the circle of justice.  The opposing riders will use their horses and their whips against the team that is guarding their goat carrier.  The horses know the game very well.  They force their bodies against the horses of the opposite team so that the rider can reach and grab the goat carcass away from the man who is carrying it.  In this game, the goat may change hands many times, back and forth from one team to another, until the the goat is tossed into the circle, and then the struggle begins again.  

Finally, when all the tournaments have been played for that particular season, a champion emerges to received accolades and awards.  He is named chapandaz, a wearer of the chapan.  What is more, he is awarded the prize of the bazuband, worn since ancient times by heroes of the people in both war and sport.  

See this bazuband and more of the history here.