The Grey Wolf Legend
Legend tells of a young boy who survived a battle; a female wolf finds the injured child and nurses him back to health. The wolf, impregnated by the boy, escapes her enemies by crossing the Western Sea to a cave near the Qocho mountains and a city of the Tocharians, giving birth to ten half-wolf, half-human boys. Of these, Ashina becomes their leader and instaures the Ashina clan, which ruled over the Göktürk and other Turkic nomadic empires.
With the rise of Turkish ethnic nationalism in the 1930s, the veneration of figures of Turkic Mythology, such as Bozkurt, Asena and Ergenekon was resurgent. The symbol of Asena is embossed on the stage of the personal theater of the first President of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, at his residence in Ankara; the Atatürk referenced the motif in speech, such as that of February 13, 1931,Türk Ocağı, in Malatya.'
- Romulus and Remus, a similar legend concerning the foundation of Rome
- Book of Zhou, Vo. 50. (Chinese)
- History of Northern Dynasties, Vo. 99. (Chinese)
- Book of Sui, Vol. 84. (Chinese)
- André Wink. Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. ISBN 0-391-04173-8. Page 65.
- Ziya Gökalp, transcription: Şahin Filiz, "Türk devletinin tekâmülü 12: Hakanlık Teşkilatı",Küçük Mecmua -II-, Bu da Çinlilere göre (Asena=Kurt) manasındadır (Turkish)
- Findley, Carter Vaughin. The Turks in World History. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517726-6. Page 38.
- Roxburgh, D. J. (ed.) Turks, A Journey of a Thousand Years. Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2005. Page 20.
- Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, Princeton University Press, 2011, p.9
- Murat Arman, "The Sources of Banality In Transforming Turkish Nationalism", CEU Political Science Journal, issue: 2 (2007), p. 136.
- Atatürk'ün Söylev ve Demeçleri II, Atatürk Kültür, Dil ve Tarih Yüksek Kurumu Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi, 1989, p. 301, Turkish text: Demiryollarını kullanacak olan Türk milleti menşeindeki ilk sanatkarlığına, demirciliğinin eserini tekrar göstermiş olmakla müftehir olacaktır. (Turkish)
- Mehmet Önder, Atatürk'ün Yurt Gezileri, Türkiye İş Bankası, 1975, p. 268.