Ärklig Qan

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.

Domains

• death underworld
• judgment of the dead

Powers

• judges the souls of the dead
• sends forth death and pestilence

Epithets

• Ärklig Qan — the Mighty KingZieme, Manichäisch-türkische Texte (1975) (secondary)

Sources

• In Old Uyghur Buddhist literature Ärklig Qan is the lord of the dead, identified with the Indo-Buddhist Yama; the same figure is the Erlik of wider Turkic underworld belief.: Zieme, Manichäisch-türkische Texte (1975) (secondary); Roux, La religion des Turcs et des Mongols (1984), 213-224 (secondary)
• Erlik as ruler of the lower world and judge of the dead is a pan-Turkic and Turco-Mongol deity of death.: Uno Harva, Die religiösen Vorstellungen der altaischen Völker (Helsinki: FF Communications 125, 1938) (secondary)