The religion of the inscriptions is not a system laid out for a reader. It appears as the grammar of the political argument. Tengri, the sky, is the source of rule: the khagan says that because Tengri willed it and because the earth and the waters were favourable, he was seated on the throne. Tengri also punishes, and the collapse of the earlier khaganate is explained as a withdrawal of favour after the Turks turned against their own leaders. Umay, a female power associated with the fertility of women and the protection of children, is named beside Tengri, and the holy earth and water, yer-sub, form the third term.
The practical instruction that follows is about staying on the steppe. The inscriptions warn that Chinese gold, silver, silk and sweet words are the means by which the Turkic people are drawn to settle near the frontier, where they lose their independence and die far from home. The Chinese histories preserve a related episode from the same generation: Bilge is said to have proposed building walled towns and Buddhist and Taoist temples, and to have been talked out of it by the old counsellor Tonyukuk on the ground that a mobile people cannot be besieged and a settled one can.
Whether or not that exchange happened as reported, the same argument is in the stones, which makes it a Tengrist political theology rather than only a piece of military advice.