Güney Kazakistan’daki Baksılık ve Eltilik Geleneğinin Şamanlık Kökleri (19. Yüzyıl ve 20. Yüzyıl Baş Dönemleri)

Abstract

A special event that continues to remain a mystery by preserving its mystery in the spiritual worlds of the Kazakh people with their traditional lives is a matter of developing shamanism in the southernregion of Kazakh territory. The Kazakh people called the male shamans “Baksi” and the female shamans “Elti”. While travellers, scholars, historians and folklore researchers who visited Kazakhlands in various historical periods, witnessed the ceremonies of the Baksi, they wrote the inspirational powers and the mysterious movements they saw as they were. Baksis associate people with the souls of the dead and mythological heroes. When Baksi’s chanted aloud, they called the elves to help andeach Baksi have had their own pīr (spiritual guide). They picked up kopuz, dombra (Kazakh musical instruments) and sticks. Baksis have had the characteristics of bard, murmurer, physician, magician, and composer, and always kept their own features secret and did not raise students. Although thelanguage of the tunes, which they sing with the same rhythm, have a feature close to folk poetry, they have changed in terms of content according to the course of time. In the southern region of Kazakhstan, the peculiarities began to be investigated scientifically starting from the 19th century and researchers, such as Chokan Velikhanov, Iyosif Kastanie, Abubakir Divayev, Ishmurat Ibragimov, Nikolay Grodekov, Lev Berg, and Petr Komarov tried to solve the mystery.Adolf Yanushkevich and Rihard Karut’s studies can be considered as data for comparative analysis. Researches and documents prove that the Baksi tradition has developed for centuries with ancientreligions, such as animism, shamanism, zoroastrism, and it is a case that later fused with the religion of Islam and continued to live in the Kazakh people.