Duente Edeni, Master of the Taiga and Game

Duente Edeni — from duente, 'taiga, forest', and edeni, 'master, owner' — is the Nanai master-spirit of the forest and the game within it, one of the great 'masters' (edeni) of the world-zones alongside the masters of earth and water. He is met in the forms of the two lords of the Amur taiga, the bear and the tiger: the tiger is held to command the game animals, sending them into the hunter's trap or guiding a lost man home, while the bear is addressed in oblique, kin-terms and honoured in the bear ceremonialism of the lower Amur peoples. Hunters prayed and made offerings to the taiga-master to secure the forest's bounty. Lopatin and later A. V. Smolyak record the cult; O. V. Maltseva's study of lower-Amur bear-beliefs sets it in its wider regional context.

Domains

• forest and wilderness
• wild game and the hunt

Powers

• to own the beasts of the taiga and release them to the hunter
• to take the form of the bear or the tiger

Epithets

• Sangia Mafa

Sources

• A. V. Smolyak, 'Nanai', in P. Friedrich & N. Diamond (eds.), Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. VI: Russia and Eurasia/China, trans. Lydia T. Black, Boston: G. K. Hall, 1994.
• O. V. Maltseva, 'A Relative in Bearskin: The Bear in Lower Amur Folk Beliefs', Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 53(1): 126-136, 2025.