Chinese Chronicles on the Origin of the Turks
Ancient Turkic legends have been preserved in Chinese chronicles, telling of the supernatural origin of the people. Here is a simplified version of it.
...A small tribe was attacked by enemies. The tribe was brave, the enemies were numerous. Sometimes courage is broken by strength: for each defender, there were forty enemies. No one surrendered, no one begged for mercy. And the enemies spared no one: the men fell in battle, the women, children, and the elderly—all ended their lives under the sword. Only one boy remained alive, the son of the chieftain. Both of his hands were cut off, and he was thrown into the swamp with mocking words:
— Let your brave tribe be reborn from you! And they laughed. The boy heard their malicious laughter for a long time.
Night came. The boy, gritting his teeth, silently died. Through his clouded consciousness, he still caught the plaintive howls of jackals, the mournful cries of owls, the rustling of snakes in the riverside grass...
But then a distant wolf howl was heard. Then it grew closer and closer. At the edge of the swamp appeared a huge she-wolf. The boy was so weak and helpless that he couldn't even think of resisting. But the she-wolf did not come for prey. She grabbed the boy by the collar of his fur coat and easily carried him out of the swamp. Then she licked him and fed him her milk...
Days, months passed, and the seasons changed. The boy grew under the protection of the she-wolf and turned into a handsome young man. Only he had no hands... And he had not seen any people...
One day he sat by the bank of a fast mountain river and thought a bitter thought. He was the last one left of his tribe, and when he died, there would be no one left. The most terrible thing that can happen to a people is to disappear from the face of the earth, leaving no descendants, no name, no memory... The she-wolf lay at his feet, looking into his eyes. And it seemed she understood...:
When the young man awoke from his gloomy thoughts, a beautiful girl stood before him.
— Who are you? Are you not the daughter of Heaven? - he asked, astonished.
— I am the goddess of this river. To save your people from eternal oblivion, the Blue Sky (Tengri) sent me: in the form of a she-wolf to help you, the little one, bleeding. Now, if you wish, I will become your wife...
After some time, the enemies killed the young man. The she-wolf ran away to the Altai Mountains and gave birth to ten sons there. They grew up and married girls from the Turfan oasis. Each of the she-wolf's sons became the progenitor of a separate Turkic people. The most agile, named Ashina, remained in Altai, and from him descended the ancient Turks. Another—Kyrgyz—began to rule the people on the Yenisei. The other brothers settled in different regions.
Many Turkic peoples, who now inhabit a vast territory from Yakutia to the Balkan Peninsula, remember the myth of their origin. For example, on the banner of the Gagauz people living in Moldova, there is a wolf's head.
The Legend of Shah-Fazil echoes real events