A new interpretation of omen 27 of the Irk Bitig

Abstract

Since the first edition of the Irk Bitig (Thomsen 1912), several scholars have worked on the analysis of the texts, primarily from a linguistic point of view. Some of the short stories in the omens are clear and easy to understand, but there are also many that are grammatically or semantically rather problematic. The meaning of the 27th omen is relatively clear and easy to analyse. In the translations so far, controversy has arisen over the precise meaning of only one word. Some translators have interpreted the Old Turkic verb ämsi- as a simulative form of the verb äm- ‘to suck / suckle’, but in fact there are no other examples of such a deverbal verb formative. Although the linguistically verifiable verb ämsi- ‘to cure / medicate’, derived from the noun äm ‘medicine’, was raised as a possibility, it was rejected as semantically unacceptable and incompatible with the text. In this article, I offer a new interpretation of the omen, and show that the previous interpretations were based on a premise (in the case of the sheep and the wolf, good and evil could only be manifested in the opposition of ‘good sheep ‒ bad wolf’), which was in fact induced by the cultural background of the interpreters, and which may not be taken for granted in the case of the old Turks.