Abka Enduri, the Sky God

Abka Enduri ('Sky God'), also styled Abka Han ('Sky Khan / Khan of Heaven') and Abka Ama ('Sky Father'), is the supreme sky deity of Manchu traditional religion, leader of the host of enduri (spirits) and the power who governs the heavens, the weather and the order of the cosmos. He was invoked to grant favourable weather for farming and warfare, and under the Qing the cult of Heaven was given imperial form, the sacrifice to Heaven being prescribed in the imperially commissioned shamanic code of 1747. In the older, female-centred Manchu cosmology the supreme sky-power had been the Sky-Mother Abka Hehe, whose place the masculine sky-god comes to occupy.

Domains

• sky and heaven
• weather and storm
• cosmic sovereignty

Powers

• to rule the heavens and uphold cosmic order over the lesser spirits
• to send rain and fair weather for farming and warfare

Epithets

• Abka HanXiaoli Jiang, 'Shamanism and the Manchu Bannermen of the Qing Dynasty', Religions 13, no. 10 (2022): 884 (secondary)
• Abka AmaMark C. Elliott, The Manchu Way (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001) (secondary)

Relations

• subordinate to: Abka Hehe, the Sky-MotherIn the older female-centred cosmology the supreme sky-power is the Sky-Mother Abka Hehe; the masculine Abka Enduri / Abka Han is the heaven-god who succeeds to her place as the cult is reframed in male-sovereign terms under the Qing.Fu Yuguang, Shamanic and Mythic Cultures of Ethnic Peoples in Northern China, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 2020-2021) (secondary)

Sources

• Abka Enduri, also called Abka Han ('Sky Khan'), is the universal sky god who leads the Manchu pantheon, governing the heavens, weather and cosmic order.: Xiaoli Jiang, 'Shamanism and the Manchu Bannermen of the Qing Dynasty', Religions 13, no. 10 (2022): 884 (secondary); Evelyn S. Rawski, The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) (secondary)