Tug (banner)

A tug (Mongolian: туг [tʰʊɡ], Turkish: tuğ, Ottoman Turkish: طوغ ṭuġ or توغ tuġ) or sulde (Mongolian: сүлд, Tibetan: བ་དན) is a pole with circularly arranged horsetail hairs of varying colors arranged at the top. It was historically flown during the period of the Mongol Empire and also by the Turkic tribal confederations such as the Duolu (Tuğluğ Confederation), and later used in derived Turco-Mongol khanates. It was also used by the Ottoman Empire, a state which was founded by Oghuz Turks. Among the Ottomans, the tug, as a sign of power and rank of pashas, was in use before the introduction of combat troops. Based on the number of tugs attached, a pasha was called "two-tug" and "three-tug."

In the 17th century, it was also adopted by East Slav paramilitaries, the Cossacks and haydamaka, under the name bunchuk (Ukrainian: бунчук, Polish: buńczuk), which is the reflection of the original Common Turkic word bōnčuk. It is still used by some units of the Polish military.

History

Early history

According to Gerard Clauson, the Turkic word tu:ğ, for traditional Turkic standards made from horse-tails or bunches of horse-hair, was borrowed from Middle Chinese *dok 纛 "banner, standard" (whose ancestor is Old Chinese *du:g (ZS) ~ dˤuk and one of whose many descendants is standard Chinese dú). In contrast, according to linguist Sevan Nişanyan, the author of the first etymological dictionary of Turkish, it is more likely in terms of cultural history that the Chinese word tu or dú is borrowed from Turkic or Mongolic. Annemarie von Gabain (1955) (apud Maenchen-Helfen, 1973) was inclined to derive Chinese 纛 *duok from Turkic *tuɣ; however, Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen thought that the loan direction had been apparently from Chinese into Turkic, as 纛 (GS 1016) was the same as 翿 dào < d'âu < d'ôg, "staff with feathers" (GS 1090z) 斿 (variant of 旒) liú ~ yóu < iâu < diôg "pendants of a banner" (GS 1080a) 游 liú ~ yóu < "pennon" (GS 1080f), which had been attested in the Classic of Poetry and Zuo Zhuan, centuries before the first appearance of the Xiongnu. Chinese observers stated that the medieval Göktürks displayed a tuğ decorated with a wolf's head at their camp's gate in order not to forget their origin from a she-wolf ancestress.