Qormusta Tengri

Qormusta Tengri is the head of the celestial pantheon in the Tengrist and Buddhist cosmology shared by the Kalmyks with the wider Mongolic world. Chief of the ninety-nine tengri and leader of the thirty-three gods, he presides over the sky, dispatches divine heroes to aid humankind, and is invoked as a high guarantor of order; his name descends, through Sogdian and Uyghur intermediaries, from the Iranian creator Ahura Mazda. In Kalmyk usage he stands at the apex of the tengri whose collective is invoked in oaths and blessings, and Buddhist tradition equates him with Indra (Khormusta as ruler of the Tushita or Trayastrimsha heaven). Sources differ on how sharply the Kalmyks distinguished him as an individual from the undifferentiated body of the tengri.

Domains

• sky and heaven

Powers

• rules the ninety-nine heavens

Epithets

• Хормуста Теңгр — Qormusta the Heaven-KingHeissig, Walther, The Religions of Mongolia (1980) (secondary)

Sources

• Qormusta Tengri is the supreme sky-god and chief of the ninety-nine tengri in the shared cosmology of the Mongolic peoples including the Oirat-Kalmyks, his name derived ultimately from the Iranian Ahura Mazda.: 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)