World-Watching Man

Khanty · deity · primordial · deity

The central Ob-Ugric intermediary, classed here as a deity (a divine son and mediator-hero). Khanty Mĭr šawijti xŭ ('the man who watches over the world'), Mansi mir-susne-xum; the corpus also carries the Mansi form (mansi_mir_susne_khum) per the tradition split. Youngest/seventh son of Num-Torum by Kaltes, he rides a winged horse on a daily circuit of the sky, watching humanity, granting fertility and fortune, and carrying prayers up to and the sky-father's word down from the remote upper heaven. Documented for the Khanty by Karjalainen and in the modern Encyclopaedia of Uralic Mythologies, with rich Mansi (Vogul) parallels in Munkácsi.

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