Ärklig Qan, 'the Mighty King', is the ruler of the lower world and judge of the dead. In the Old Uyghur Buddhist manuscripts of Turfan his name renders that of Yama, king of the dead, who examines the deeds of each soul and pronounces its fate; in the broader Turkic imagination the same being is Erlik, lord of the dark underworld who looses death, plague and evil spirits upon the living and draws their souls down to him. The figure sits at the meeting of native Turkic underworld belief and the Indo-Buddhist infernal judge, the two fused in the Uyghur textual tradition.