Chiltan
The Chiltan, 'the Forty Persons', are a named collective of forty invisible holy beings in the folk religion of the Tajiks and their Central Asian neighbours. Believed to walk unseen among ordinary people, they secretly sustain the order of the world, reward and shield the pious, and can punish those who offend them; a person who unknowingly does them a kindness may be repaid with wealth or hidden knowledge. In the shamanic tradition documented by Basilov they are the foremost tutelary spirits (parikhon and folbin healers work through them), and the number forty aligns them with the wider Islamic notion of the concealed 'forty saints' (rijāl al-ghayb) and the abdāl. They are conceived as a single named order rather than as forty individually named figures.
Domains
- hidden saints order
- shamanic tutelary
Powers
- uphold and secretly govern the world
Epithets
- Чилтан — the Forty OnesBasilov, V.N. 'Chiltany.' In Mify narodov mira, ed. S.A. Tokarev, vol. 2, 618. Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, 1982. (secondary)
Sources
- The Chiltan are a named collective of forty hidden holy beings in Tajik and Central Asian belief who invisibly protect and govern the world.: Basilov, V.N. 'Chiltany.' In Mify narodov mira, ed. S.A. Tokarev, vol. 2, 618. Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, 1982. (secondary)
- In Central Asian shamanism the Chiltan appear as the principal tutelary spirits of the shaman, aiding cure and divination.: Basilov, V.N. Shamanstvo u narodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana. Moscow: Nauka, 1992. (secondary)