The Hunter Ashir and the Living Water
Water - The Basis of Life
The peoples of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, who roamed the endless steppes and deserts before the October Revolution, always considered water to be the foundation of life. They had a saying: "Suu jok yerde omur bolboyt"—"Where there is no water, there is no life."
As is known, the World Ocean occupies 71 percent of the surface of our planet. Water is everywhere on the Earth's surface (including in the famous Sahara Desert). The human body is composed of 70 percent water. Any food, including solid food, contains water.
Every day, a person consumes 2.5 liters of water in its pure form, and about 10 liters pass through the intestines, meaning the body excretes an additional 7.5 liters of water into the intestines every day. In the humps of a camel—an inhabitant of the desert—fats oxidize to release up to 40 liters of water. Thanks to these reserves, camels can go without water for a very long time—up to 40 days.
There is much to say about water. Here it is appropriate to give one example from the life of the Kyrgyz hunter Ashir. According to legend, at a young age, while hunting high in the mountains, he saw a huge rusty-colored boulder from which water was dripping. Without hesitation, Ashir decided to drink and noticed that the water had a slightly sour taste. Setting up camp nearby, he collected water from this source in a container. He then brought the water home and told his sick father where it came from. The father pondered for a moment and then tried the water. To the surprise of the villagers, old Kulboldu recovered from his serious illness and lived for a long time afterward. Ashir himself grew into a tall and strong man. People asked him to find this living water—muryokton suusu—but no matter how much the hunter searched, he could not find it.
The human body sometimes lacks certain mineral salts, and then doctors recommend drinking water that is saturated with these mineral salts. Young Ashir likely stumbled upon a water source that was oversaturated with salts of certain metals or minerals; evidently, it seeped through deposits of these elements and then surfaced.
The Japanese scientist Seiji Yamashita experimentally discovered "living water," which the Kyrgyz knew about in ancient times and empirically established its miraculous properties. Japanese professor Yamashita added a bit of iron salts to ordinary water and obtained a miraculous solution called pi-water (he named it this way). When used in agriculture, the ripening period of vegetable crops is halved, chickens grow faster, and eels and carps in lakes are astonishing in size. Medical professionals noted that pi-water prevents allergic reactions, makes the face look younger when consumed, and so on.
The ancient Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus considered water to be the source of all living things. The famous French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote about natural water: "It cannot be said that you are necessary for life; you are life itself... You are the greatest wealth in the world."
Interestingly, the elemental composition of the blood of animals (and humans as well) is close to the elemental composition of ocean water, which confirms the material unity of the world.
