One of the animals depicted in the Gokturks’ plastic works was the tiger. Mahmud of Kashgar was the first to explain that the word “toŋa” was the answer to the question of what this animal was called during the Gokturk Period.

Mahmud of Kashgar explained the word “toŋa” in his immortal work, Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk, as “a type of leopard, bebr, that kills elephants.” Şemseddin Sami's work, Kamûs-ı Türkî, played a significant role in transmitting this meaning to the present day. Indeed, the fact that the animal referred to in the Kamûs-ı Türkî is both likened to a tiger and described as spotted evoked contradictory visual characteristics in the predator in question; the meaning of the word “toŋa” was widely accepted as “tiger.” Despite this widespread view, some scholars who have examined written sources have equated “toŋa” with “bars (leopard),” another predatory cat, arguing that it must be a type of bars. This has led some scholars to believe that the Gokturks had never seen a tiger in their lifetimes. 

This article aims to highlight the importance of visual materials obtained through archaeological research in filling in the gaps in written sources by presenting examples of the tiger figure with its natural physical characteristics from the pre-Gokturk period, the Gokturks, and also among the Kyrgyz, who, like the Gokturks, used the Turkic runic alphabet.

To?a, tiger, leopard (pars), Gokturks