Folklore and mythological origin of “Korkyt Ata” and its transformation into “Kitabi-Dede Korkud”

Abstract

The majestic monument of the Turkic peoples “Kitabi-Dede Korkud” has been studied by scholars from different points of view for more than two hundred years. In Kazakh sources, “Dede Korkut” is found not only in this form, but also in the form of “Khorkhut”, “Korkyt” or “Korkyt Ata”. The origins of “Korkyt Ata” are mythological legends, legends, tales about “Khorkhut”, “Korkyt Ata”, which spread from Southern Siberia, the Syr Darya up to the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, when the Kipchaks and Oguzes, scattered across Turkestan and gradually split off from the Kipchaks, the Oguz tribes, being heterogeneous, began to move into the Southern and Northern Caucasus and lived a settled life in vast territories. The Oghuz created their own state there, whose soldiers protected it from the raids of foreign invaders. To protect the country, of course, a recognized wise mentor was needed, determining the essential guidelines of the life and activity of the ethnic group. Such was the visionary sage Dede Korkud. It was his name that the original and unsurpassed monument “Kitabi-Dede Korkud” was named, which has come down to us in twelve songs, united under a single structural-compositional and ideological-artistic embodiment. The monument is therefore called “The Book of my Grandfather Korkud” because it, like a real book of medieval wisdom, is quite perfect and refined both in form (architectonics) and in content. Despite the fact that there are natural archetypal connections between “Korkyt Ata” and “Kitabi-Dede Korkud”, nevertheless, “The Book ...” differs in many respects from the legend “Korkyt Ata”. This applies not only to the area of distribution, but also to other key points that have found a place in the text of the epic. In our opinion, despite some commonality and similarities, “Korkyt Ata” in genre-artistic terms did not embody all the constants relevant to the epic genre, although some elements of it are still visible there. The main purpose of this study is to study the common and distinctive features of the Turkestan “Korkyt Ata” from the Azerbaijani “Kitabi-Dede Korkud”. The material of the research is mythological legends, legends and tales about “Korkyt Ata” and the songs “Kitabi-Dede Korkud” in Azerbaijani interpretation and interpretation. The subject of the study is not only samples of the epic in Kazakh oral folk art, storytelling, but also some problems of the Oguz epic “Kitabi-Dede Korkud”. The theoretical and methodological basis of our research is made up of both general provisions of the dialectic of myth and scientific and theoretical views of famous Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Russian and other folklorists, epicologists, regarding the problems associated with the scientific understanding of the studied material. The scholarly novelty of the study in the paper consists in the fact that it attempts to qualify mythological legends, legends and tales about “Korkyt Ata” and the Oguz “Kitabi-Dede Korkud” in a comparative typological aspect. In this case, we do not specifically dwell on the available Dresden and Vatican versions. It is necessary for us to present the Kipchak landscape “Korkyt Ata” in comparison with the Oguz “Kitabi-Dede Korkud”. In the study, where necessary, approaches were used to establish comparative, mythological-historical, plot-plot correspondences.

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