Central Asia and the steppe (6th–10th c.)Culture and art

The Orkhon inscriptions: memorial stelae of Kül Tegin and Bilge Qaghan

In 732 and 735 the rulers of the Second Turkic Khaganate set up memorial stelae in the Orkhon valley for Prince Kül Tegin and his brother Bilge Qaghan. Beside Chinese texts sent by the Tang court, they carry long inscriptions in the Old Turkic runic script in which the khagan recounts the rise, fall and revival of the Turks — together with the slightly earlier inscription of Tonyukuk, among the earliest texts in a Turkic language.

Date: 1 August 732 – 735start: exact date; end: year known · duration: ≈ 3 yearsDate in the Julian calendar
Place: Khöshöö Tsaidam in the Orkhon valleytoday: Khöshöö Tsaidam, Khashaat district, Arkhangai Province, Mongolia; the stelae are kept in the museum at the site · Central and Northern Asia
Participants: Second Turkic Khaganate, Bilge Qaghan, Kül Tegin, Tonyukuk, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, Tang dynasty
Threads: Central Asia and the steppe (6th–10th c.)
Also known as: Kül Tegin inscription; Bilge Qaghan inscription; Khöshöö Tsaidam; Khoshoo Tsaidam; Koshu-Tsaidam; Yollıg Tigin; Old Turkic script; Orkhon script; Tonyukuk inscription; Bain Tsokto; Надпись Кюль-тегина; Памятник Бильге-кагану; Кошо-Цайдам; Хошо-Цайдам; Йоллыг-тегин; Орхоно-енисейская письменность; Надпись Тоньюкука; Баин-Цокто

Under Bilge Qaghan, raised to the throne in 716 by his brother Kül Tegin, the restored khaganate was at the height of its power. In 725 the Tang chancellor Zhang Yue, warning of the danger from the Turks, described their leaders: the khagan humane and caring for his people, who serve him willingly; Kül Tegin brave and invincible in war; and the aged Tonyukuk, Bilge’s father-in-law, deep in counsel and wiser with the years — three chiefs of one mind. Yet the Turks kept the peace with the Tang, who in 727 opened a frontier market where every year Chinese silk was traded for Turkic war horses. When Kül Tegin died in 731, Emperor Xuanzong sent envoys to mourn him and had a stele set up; according to the Old Book of Tang, he composed its Chinese text himself and had a shrine built with stone statues and battle scenes painted on its walls. The Chinese inscription is dated 1 August 732; the Old Turkic text was finished on the 27th day of the same month — 21 August 732, by the calculation of the French Turkologist Louis Bazin. In 734 Bilge Qaghan was poisoned by one of his ministers, and in 735 a second stele, with a Chinese text by the court historian Li Rong, was raised in a neighbouring enclosure.

The Old Turkic texts, written, as he says himself, by the prince Yollıg Tigin, use the runic script of the Turks, which is thought to derive from Sogdian writing. Speaking in Bilge Qaghan’s voice, they recall the founders of the realm, Bumin and Istämi, lament the fifty years when the Turkic nobles took Chinese titles and served the Chinese emperor, celebrate the liberation under Ilterish and the campaigns that took the Turks from the Shandong plain in the east to the Iron Gate in the west, and warn against the flattering words and enervating riches of the Chinese: if the Turks stay in the Ötüken forest, they will rule the tribes for ever. A century and a half earlier the Bugut stele of the first khaganate had been written in Sogdian; the inscription of Tonyukuk at Bain Tsokto near present-day Ulaanbaatar, dated by scholars from about 716 to the early 730s, is a little older than the Orkhon stelae.

The stelae were found by Nikolai Yadrintsev’s expedition in 1889. In 1893 the Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen deciphered the script, and in 1894 Vasily Radlov published the first reading of the texts. The monuments are part of the Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Connections

Related events

Bumin overthrows the Rouran: the Turkic Khaganate is foundedbetween February and March 552 · Central and Northern Asiathe Old Turkic texts honour Bumin and Istämi as the founders of the realm
The Bugut inscription, earliest monument of the Turkic Khaganatebetween 581 and 587 · Central and Northern Asiathe first khaganate’s memorial of the 580s was written in Sogdian; the Orkhon stelae speak Turkic
Qutlugh (Ilterish) restores the Turkic Khaganate682 · Central and Northern Asiathe inscriptions tell of the Turks’ fifty years under the Tang and their liberation under Ilterish, the father of Bilge and Kül Tegin
The Uyghurs overthrow the Turks: the Uyghur Khaganate744 · Central and Northern Asiabarely a decade after the Orkhon stelae were raised, the khaganate they celebrated fell

Meanwhile in the world

Other regions, within a year of this event

Western and Central Europe

Battle of Tours10 October 732
Bede completes the Ecclesiastical History of the English People731
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Eastern Europe

Second Arab–Khazar War: from Balanjar to Marwan’s campaign to the Volga722–737
Volyntsevo culture: the Slavs of the Dnieper Left Bank in the Khazar agebetween 700 and 750 – between 813 and 833

Balkans and Anatolia

The Ecloga: law code of Leo III and Constantine Vbetween 726 and 741
Byzantine Iconoclasmbetween 726 and 730 – 11 March 843

South Asia

Indian kings repel the Arab raids from Sind: Nagabhata I and the battle of Navsari723 – between 738 and 739
Lalitaditya Muktapida rules Kashmir: the Sun temple of Martandbetween 724 and 725 – between 760 and 761

East Asia

Reign of Emperor Xuanzong: the Kaiyuan and Tianbao eras8 September 712 – 12 August 756

Southeast Asia and Oceania

The Canggal inscription: Sanjaya and the rise of Mataram6 October 732

North America

The Late Woodland period in eastern North Americac. 500 – c. 1000
Basketmaker III: pottery, beans and the bow on the Colorado Plateauc. 500 – c. 750
Plum Bayou Mounds: a planned ceremonial centre in the Arkansas valleyc. 650 – c. 1050

Latin America

Wari culture and the Middle Horizon state in the Central Andesc. 600 – c. 1000
Tiwanaku culture at its height by Lake Titicacac. 600 – c. 1000
Nazca culture and the Nazca Linesbetween 200 and 100 BC – between 500 and 800

The same period

7328th century

Sources

Wikipedia (English): Orkhon inscriptions
Wikipedia (English): Kul Tigin
Wikipedia (English): Bilge Qaghan
Wikipedia (English): Tonyukuk inscriptions
Wikipedia (Russian): Орхонские надписи
Wikipedia (Russian): Памятник Бильге-кагану
Лю Сюй и др. Цзю Тан шу (Old Book of Tang), гл. 194А: жизнеописание тюрков.
Ross E. D. The Orkhon Inscriptions: Being a Translation of Professor Vilhelm Thomsen’s Final Danish Rendering // Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies. — 1930. — Vol. 5, № 4. — P. 861–876.
Малов С. Е. Памятники древнетюркской письменности: Тексты и исследования. — М.; Л.: Изд-во АН СССР, 1951.