Umai
Kazakh · deity · Kazakh traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Umai is the great mother-goddess of the Turkic peoples, whose name means the womb and afterbirth and who therefore rules over conception, birth and the tender first years of life. She attends every cradle and every woman in labor, warding the newborn's fragile soul; a sleeping baby's smile is her caress, and its startled cry her momentary departure. Named beside Tengri in the eighth-century inscriptions, where a queen's dignity is measured by likeness to her, she endured in Kazakh usage as Umai-ana, invoked by mothers and by the baksy who drive off the child-stealing Albasty in her name. She forms with the sky-father Tengri and the sacred Earth-Water a triad of protecting powers, the maternal earthward pole of a cosmos crowned by heaven.
Domains
- childbirth motherhood
- fertility increase
Powers
- guards infants and women in childbirth
Epithets
- Ұмай ана — Mother UmaiKul Tigin inscription, which compares the queen to 'my mother the Qatun, like Umai'; in Tekin (1968). (primary)
Relations
- ally: TengriThe maternal counterpart to the celestial Tengri; the two head the protective powers of the old Turkic cult.Orkhon inscriptions invoking Tengri and Umai together; in Tekin (1968). (primary)
- ally: Zher-SuBilge Qagan inscription pairing Umai with the sacred Yer-Sub; in Tekin (1968). (primary)
- enemy: AlbastyAs guardian of mothers and newborns Umai stands directly against the child-harming Albasty, whom baksy expel in her name.Basilov, V. N. Shamanstvo u narodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana (Moscow: Nauka, 1992). (secondary)
Sources
- Umai is the mother-goddess of Turkic religion, protectress of children, women in labor and the fertility of the household, carried into Kazakh belief as Umai-ana.: Kul Tigin inscription (c. 732 CE), in Tekin (1968). (primary); Potapov, 'Umai' (1973). (secondary)
- In Kazakh and Altaic ethnography Umai presides over the cradle and the birthing tent and is invoked against spirits that endanger the infant.: Basilov, Shamanstvo u narodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana (1992). (secondary); Harva, Uno. Die religiosen Vorstellungen der altaischen Voelker, FF Communications 125 (Helsinki, 1938). (secondary)