Erlik Nomin Khan

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.

Domains

• death and underworld

Powers

• judges the souls of the dead

Epithets

• Эрлг Номин хан — Erlik, King of the LawHeissig, Walther, The Religions of Mongolia (1980) (secondary)

Sources

• Among the Kalmyks the lord of death and the underworld is Erlik Nomin Khan, judge of the dead, identified in Buddhist form with Yama, the dharmaraja.: Heissig, Walther, The Religions of Mongolia (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980) (secondary); Neklyudov, S. Yu., 'Mongolic Peoples' Mythology', in Mify narodov mira (Moscow, 1980) (secondary)