48 chapter onethe craft smen and painters sent by the Chinese emperor and they
worked at the construction and decoration of Kül-tegin’s (i.e. Bilgä
khagan’s brother) temple in 732–733 A.D.^113 One of the reasons was
that the Turkic craft smen were not that skillful. Th e temple provides
evidence for the synthesis of Chinese and Turkic elements, especially
the ones that are common for the Central Asian cultures and do not
contradict each other. V. Voitov mentions some of them including the
alleys in Kül-tegin’s temple fl anked by rows of statues. Th ey are typi-
cal for the burial and memorial monuments of the emperors and the
highest rank offi cials of the Jurchen, Koreans, and Chinese; the Chi-
nese called the “alley with sculptures leading to the grave” the “road
of the spirits”, thus semantically related to the macrocosmic vertical
axis.^114
Emperor Xuanzong continued to send craft smen aft er the death of
Bilgä khagan and in 735 A.D. they built another magnifi cent temple
situated near that of his brother.^115 It seems that the adaptation of all
these signs in the Turkic milieu (especially the sacred milieu) faced
no troubles; probably it was interpreted by the Turks through another
possible prism, namely as a respectful attitude of a foreign ruler, which
can also be found in the inscriptions on the stelae in both temples.
Th e appearance of crosses on some of the stone inscriptions in
Bulgaria during the reign of “khanasybigi” Omurtag (814–831)^116 as
well as the image of the same khan on golden medallions, depicted in
Byzantine emperor’s garment and holding Byzantine regalia,^117 should
be interpreted in a similar way (provisionally called imitatio imperii).
Th ese foreign signs were adopted in own milieu with a certain aim
and were loaded with a diff erent signifi cance. Th ey were accompa-
nied by own signs as well, including the title of Omurtag (‘kanasybigi’)
on the golden medallions (i.e. the Bulgar original title meaning “ruler
from God”) and the tortoises and dragons in the Turkic temples lived
peacefully together with the Turkic balbals and sacrifi cing pits.
Th e fear that certain elements of the sedentary Chinese civilization’s
otherness would infl uence the non-understanding of the Turkness (the
(^113) Kliashtornyi 1964, 56–58; Novgorodova 1981, 207–213; Voitov 1996, 100–101;
Stebleva 1965, 110, 123; Kubarev 1984, 60.
(^114) Voitov 1996, 108. Also see, Kubarev 1984, 60–63.
(^115) Voitov 1996, 101.
(^116) For this see, Beshevliev 1992, 83–84; Stepanov 1998, 253.
(^117) Yurukova and Penchev 1990, 22, ph. I.3; Beshevliev 1992, 83–84; Stepanov 2001,
6–7.