Tangra
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- For the district in Calcutta associated with the Chinese population, see Tangra, Calcutta.
Tangra (Bulgarian: Тангра),means "SKY" and "GOD" (an Altaic word) was the name of the supreme God of the Bulgars until the official adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria by Tsar Boris I in 865.
[edit] Name relations
People from the Yakuts to Chuvash, the Turks and Mongols use this name, sometimes glossed as the Eternal Blue Sky, for the Sky Father (most of these people are somehow related to the Bulgarians).
Variations of the name include: Tengri (Uyghur, Mongolian), Tanri (Turkish), Täñre (Tatar), Tangri (Azeri, Turkmen), Tangara (Yakut or Sakha).
The Chinese word for "heaven", "Tian" is allegedly a cognate of Tan, as an attestation of Turkic origin of certain early Chinese dynasties.
Tangra was the old name of the Musala peak, which is the highest peak in the Rila mountain range (the highest peak in Balkan peninsula), located in Bulgaria.
Interestingly, one of the highest mountains in the Tian Shan mountain range has a similar name - Khan Tengri ("Tian Shan" form Chinese - "Heavenly Mountain").
The similarity between these two mountain names is not accidental.
According to that the Bulgarians are probably originally Pamirian (lived in the region much earlier than the Uyghurs), and gave a similar name to another mountain in their new land. It is very possible that they gave the name of Khan Tengri mountain before they moved to today's Bulgaria.
Another relation can be seen in the name of the first known Khan of the Huns - "Khan Tengri", and the fact that Bulgars were the Western part of the Hunnic Empire (the Western Huns) and probably the last 2 dynasties of the Huns.
[edit] See also
- Tangra (rock group) - a well known Bulgarian music group from the 1970s and 1980s.
- Tangra Mountains on Livingston Island, Antarctica, named after the deity.
- Tangra 2004/05 Expedition.
- The Bulgarian Radio Tangra.
- Tangra Mega Rock radio station
