Xormuzta Täŋri
Uyghur · deity · Uyghur traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Xormuzta Täŋri is the Old Uyghur name of the Manichaean First Man, the champion whom the Father of Light sends down at the beginning of the cosmic war. Bearing the name of the Iranian Ohrmazd, borrowed through Sogdian, he arms himself with the Fivefold God of the light-elements and descends to meet the invading darkness. Defeated and devoured, his luminous armour becomes the Living Soul scattered through matter, and he himself is answered from above and raised back toward the realm of light. The Turfan hymnbooks of the Uyghur Manichaean church praise him at length; in the later Buddhist Uyghur texts his name survives as a title of Indra, king of the gods.
Parentage
- parent: ÄzruaEvoked from the transcendent Father of Greatness (Äzrua) at the opening of the cosmic drama; treated in the tradition as the Father's called-forth son.Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road (1993), on the Manichaean evocation of the First Man by the Father of Greatness through the Mother of Life (secondary)
Domains
- light vs darkness
- primordial combat
Powers
- descends as the First Man to fight darkness
- is redeemed and drawn back toward the light
Epithets
- Xormuzta Täŋri — the god Xormuzta (Ohrmazd)Clark, Uygur Manichaean Texts vol. 2 (2017) (primary)
Relations
- parent: ÄzruaEvoked from the transcendent Father of Greatness (Äzrua) at the opening of the cosmic drama; treated in the tradition as the Father's called-forth son.Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road (1993), on the Manichaean evocation of the First Man by the Father of Greatness through the Mother of Life (secondary)
Sources
- Xormuzta is the Old Uyghur Manichaean name of the First Man / Primal Man, derived from the Iranian Ohrmazd, attested in the Turfan Manichaean texts.: Clark, Uygur Manichaean Texts vol. 2: Texts (Brepols, 2017) (primary); Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road (1993) (secondary)
- After the Manichaean period the name Xormuzta / Qormusta passed into Old Uyghur Buddhist usage as an epithet of the heaven-king Indra.: Erkoç, 'Pre-Manichaean Beliefs of the Uyghurs II: Other Religious Elements', Journal of Religious History 47 (2023) (secondary)