Tură, the supreme heaven-god and creator

Tură is the supreme deity of the Chuvash, the lord of the bright upper sky and the single creator of the world. The name continues the Common Turkic theonym Tängri, and the same word serves in Chuvash as the ordinary term for 'god'. He is addressed through a chain of honorifics — the Supreme God (Şülti Tură), the Great God (Măn Tură), the God of the blue sky (Kăvak Tĕneri Tură), the Elder God (Aslă Tură) and simply Father (Aşa) — and is qualified as the Creator (Śuratakan). Nineteenth- and twentieth-century ethnographers describe the Chuvash religious year as organised around offerings to Tură and to the ancestors; the great open-air sacrifices for rain and harvest are directed to him. Later scholarship, building on Magnitsky's catalogue of more than two hundred named gods and spirits, presents the lesser powers as ministers carrying out Tură's will rather than as rival deities.

Domains

• sky and heaven
• creation of the world
• supreme sovereignty

Powers

• to create and order the world and its living beings
• to grant rain, fertility and the harvest in answer to communal sacrifice

Epithets

• Şülti TurăChuvash Religion. In Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., edited by Lindsay Jones. Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2005. (secondary)
• Aslă TurăMészáros, Gyula. A csuvas ősvallás emlékei [Monuments of the Ancient Chuvash Religion]. Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1909. (secondary)
• AşaSalmin, Anton K. Sistema religii chuvashey [The System of the Chuvash Folk Religion]. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2007. (secondary)

Relations

• spouse: Kepe, goddess of fate and consort of TurăIn the household-and-pantheon schema recorded by Volga ethnographers, the fate-goddess Kepe is named as the consort of the supreme god Tură and the intermediary who carries his decrees to humankind.Salmin, Anton K. Sistema religii chuvashey [The System of the Chuvash Folk Religion]. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2007. (secondary)

Sources

• Tură is the supreme creator and heaven-god of Chuvash traditional religion, the Volga reflex of the Turkic sky-god Tängri and the focus of the principal communal sacrifices.: Salmin, Anton K. Sistema religii chuvashey [The System of the Chuvash Folk Religion]. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2007. (secondary); Mészáros, Gyula. A csuvas ősvallás emlékei [Monuments of the Ancient Chuvash Religion]. Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1909. (secondary)