Erlik Nomin Khan is the ruler of the underworld and the judge of the dead in Kalmyk belief, inherited from the wider Mongolic and Turkic figure of Erlig and reidentified under Buddhism with Yama, king of the dharma (nomin khan). From his subterranean realm he summons death and sends out spirits of disease, and after death he weighs the deeds of souls and consigns them to their next state. In the Tengrist cosmology from which he descends he stands as the dark counterpart to the luminous sky, while in the Buddhist synthesis of the Kalmyks he is domesticated as the fearsome but lawful lord of the dead depicted in temple painting. Sources differ on the extent to which his native funerary character was overwritten by his Buddhist role as Yama.