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Petar Dobrev: THE SECRETS OF OLD BULGARIAN RELIGION
Prior to Christianity Bulgarians had a different religion. We can learn about it from a direct historical source – the dispute of Khan Omurtag with Cinamon of Byzantium. “If you praise the Sun and the Moon [as gods] – says Cinamon to Omurtag – and make me wonder at their magnificence, and I do wonder, I still find them creations and servants not only to God but also to us, the human beings.” To which Khan Omurtag answers: “Do not abase our gods! Their power is great and you can judge about it from the fact that we, who pay homage to them, conquered the whole land of the Romans.” (Cf. 1931, p. 256-259)
The Bulgars had the right to pay homage to their gods and to be proud of them. In an old manuscript we find the names of Bulgarian gods side by side with those of well-known ancient peoples. The author of this manuscript, unknown in Bulgaria until recently and kept in the greatest French and English libraries, is the famous Arab scholar El-Balhi (cir. 850). Here is what he says: “It is interesting that all peoples have their own names for the Creator. The Arabs call Him Allah in the singular, and the other deities they call Illah; the Persians call Him Hormuz, Ized, Yazdan. In Zaratustra he is called Hormuz, but I have also heard the names Khod-Eht and Khod-Boreht, which means “He-Himself”. The Indians and the people of Sind (Pakistan) call him Shita Vabit and Mahadeva. The Turkic people say Bir Tengri*, which means, “There is one God”. The Christians of Syria say “Laha Raba Kuadussa”. The Jews say in their Jewish language: “Elohim Adonai” or “Ehie Asher Ehie”. Elohim means god in their language. I heard the Bulgarians call the Creator with the name “Edfu” and when I asked them how they call their idol, they answered – “Fa”. I also asked the Copts what is their name for the Creator. They answered – “Ahad Shanak”. (M. Tahir, Le livre de la creation de el-Balhi. Paris, 1899, v. IV, p. 56).
[*There is a peak in the Tien Shan mountains, named Khan-Tengri - 22,949 feet/6,995 m, - and it was long regarded as the highest peak of the Tien Shan system.]
Religious data offered by El-Balhi astound the reader with their precision and broadness. He gives the accurate names of God used by well-known peoples and also by some specific ethnic communities like the Sinds from Eastern Pakistan and the Copts, almost forgotten successors of the ancient Egyptians. It is then hardly possible that the scholar is wrong about the Bulgarians. What is more, his text contains the expression “I heard the Bulgarians..”, which indicates that he had the data directly from the Bulgarians. Judging by this text, our ancestors believed not only in the celestial bodies but also in a supreme God-Creator. As different from the Persians however, who called him Hormuz, and the Turkic people who called him Tengri, the Bulgarians used the strange and unknown word EDFU.
The two new sources discussed here broaden and enrich our notions of the religion of the old Bulgarians. So far scholars had only one real fact to rely on – the name TANGRA, discovered in the form of TANGRAN by Prof. V. Beshevliev in an early Bulgarian inscription of the 9th c. It turns out that, like the Persians, who called God with three parallel names, the Bulgarians called him Tangra, but also Edfu – a fact completely unknown to this day.
An interesting question arises: what are the regions in which the Creator was called with the two names of Tangra and Edfu? Something similar, as I was able to discover, existed in one single region of the East – Pamir and Hindukush [see the maps above], where, according to historical sources, the Bulgarians lived before they migrated to Europe. The notion of TANDRA - ‘lightening”- is very popular there and is connected with the supreme God of thunder. Parallel to it a second name of God is also commonly used – Hudo-ETH. Not very far from Pamir, in the Fergan valley, we still have the word FA – idol, fetish, included in Assadi’s dictionary of modern Persian and referred to in the commentaries to El-Balhi’s works. The use of these notions in the region of Pamir is not accidental – there was in these parts, following the Arab scholar Massudi, an enormous temple of the Sun, classified among the seven largest temples in the world. And the Sun itself, in its zenith, was called with names like Adhu and Edh, cognate with the Sanskrit notion Aditya (Sun), and especially the epithet EDDH – burning, blazing.
Such data indicate that the roots of the religion of the Bulgarians can be found in the region of Pamir and Hidukush where they lived before moving to Europe. Two relics of this forgotten religion were discovered quite recently:
a bronze rosette from Pliska, dedicated to the seven celestial bodies and marked by the typical Bulgar symbol IYI, and two stone slabs with the same symbol and
drawings of the Sun and the Moon, found not far from the Bulgarska Morava river.
To the same religion we can attribute also three newly deciphered runic inscriptions from Murfatlar, two of which are dedicated to the Sun and Jupiter. The third one consists of the single word EFE, which could be a term of address to the god Edfu of the type EDFE or some parallel name of the same god. (Cf. P. Dobrev. Universum Protobulgaricum. New York, 1996).
Very interesting in this connection is the history of the religious cult of the seven celestial bodies. It appears for the first time in the Shumer-Accadian civilization where the names of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets, known to the Ancient world, are always accompanied by the word DINGIR – god, akin to the Elam word TANRU. The Sun is called Dingir-UTU (Sun God) by the Shumerians, the Moon is called Dingir-sin (Moon God), etc. From this very part of the world the cult of the celestial bodies spread radially to the East and the West among the ancient peoples – Assyrians, Indo-Iranians, Hittites, Celts, Romans, etc. Widely spread are also words like DINGIR and TANRU or the like: the Assyrian word TANRA – heavenly body, the Indian TARA – star, the Hittite TARA – heavenly light, the Celtic TARAN – god of thunder, the Anglo-Saxon THUNDER, the Pamir word TANDRA – lightening, and the remotest cognate – the Turkic word TENGRI (god of the bright blue sky).
Old Bulgarian religion, with its devotion to the seven celestial bodies and the Supreme God, called Tangra and Edfu, is part of this religious system. What is more, it does not represent the most simplified Turkic variant but the initial well developed system. This is not primitive Asiatic shamanism, as interpreted by some authors, but one of the oldest religions of humanity. It is high time to acknowledge this fact.
Dr. Peter Dobrev, Senior Research Associate, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
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Името на бога на българите според Ал-Балхи
