The Altaians told how the earth was made from earth fetched up out of the primal water. The story was written down in several versions in the nineteenth century. The versions agree that in the beginning there was only water, and that Erlik comes out of the work of creation.[1] They disagree on who dives. In Radloff’s version a first man dives, hides part of the earth in his mouth and is named Erlik by the creator, Kaira Kan.[2] In Verbitskii’s version nobody dives. Ülgen grasps a stone that rises out of the water and makes the earth by his word. Erlik is made afterwards from a lump of clay.[3]

The Orkhon inscriptions have one sentence about the beginning and no story.[4] The tale belongs to the ethnography of the last two centuries, not to the khaganates.

Radloff’s version

Radloff gives the story in the second volume of Aus Sibirien as one of the accounts that the Altaians told of the creation of the world.[5] Before earth and heaven were made, all was water, and sun and moon did not exist.[5] Then Tengere Kaira Kan made first a being like himself and called it man, Kishi. Kaira Kan is the highest of the gods, the beginning of all that is, and the father and mother of mankind.[2] Kaira Kan and the man floated quietly over the water, like two black geese.[6]

The man was not content with that peace. He wanted to rise higher than Kaira Kan. He lost the power of flight and fell into the bottomless water.[6] Near drowning, he called on Kaira Kan, whom Radloff glosses as the gracious heaven.[6] Kaira Kan told him to rise from the depth, and he rose. Then Kaira Kan made a star come up out of the sea. The man could sit on it and be safe from the water.[6]

Because the man could no longer fly, Kaira Kan thought of making the earth. He bade the man dive deep into the water and bring earth from the bottom. Kaira Kan strewed that earth on the surface.[6] The man put part of the earth into his mouth, in order to make a land of his own in secret.[6] When he came up, the earth swelled in his mouth until he could not breathe and nearly choked. Kaira Kan commanded him to spit it out.[6]

The land that Kaira Kan had made was flat and smooth. The earth that came out of the man’s mouth spurted in all directions and covered whole tracts with swamp hummocks.[6] In his anger Kaira Kan named the man Erlik and banished him from the realm of light.[6] Then he made other men. He let a tree with nine branches grow from the earth and made a man under each branch. The nine men were the forefathers of the nine peoples of the earth.[6]

Erlik saw the new men and saw that they were beautiful and good. He asked Kaira Kan to give them into his hand, and Kaira Kan refused. Erlik then led them astray and seized them by force.[6] Kaira Kan was angry with the foolish people who had let Erlik seduce them. He resolved to leave mankind to itself.[6] He banished Erlik again, this time to the third layer of the underworld, the realm of darkness. For himself he made the seventeen heavens with their inhabitants, and he took the highest as his permanent dwelling.[7] As protector and teacher of mankind he left Mai-Tärä behind.[7]

Erlik saw the beautiful heaven and resolved to build one for himself. With Kaira Kan’s leave he settled his own subjects there. These were the evil spirits whom he had corrupted out of men, and they lived better than the men whom God had made.[7] That angered Kaira Kan. He sent the hero Mandyshirä to destroy Erlik’s heaven.[7] The heaven broke under the blows of Mandyshirä’s lance and fell to earth in pieces. The earth, until then smooth and flat, was spoiled. The falling fragments made the great mountains and the deep ravines, and impenetrable forests grew between them.[7] Kaira Kan banished Erlik to the deepest layer of the earth, where neither moon nor sun shines and no light of the stars reaches. He ordered Erlik to stay there until the end of the world.[7]

Radloff adds two remarks. In one variant, he says, Kaira Kan first made three great fish and fixed the earth on their backs.[8] The legend as he heard it also holds a story of a fall of man, which he left out because it agrees almost wholly with the account in Genesis.[8] The names Mandyshirä and Mai-Tärä point, he says, to Buddhist influence. He finds in these stories clear traces of the Mosaic creation account and of Buddhism. The Mosaic account, he says, came partly through Muslims and partly through Christians.[9]

The longer Altaian text

A longer telling, which Radloff printed in his collection of Altaian texts, the Proben der Volksliteratur, has been summarised at length.[10] In it the god, Kuday, and a man fly over the water as two black geese. The man stirs up the waves and splashes the god’s face.[11] He thinks himself greater than the god and plunges into the water. He nearly drowns and cries out for help. The god tells him to come up. Then the god bids a firm stone rise from the bottom, and the two sit on it.[11]

The man dives twice. The first time he brings earth up. The god casts it on the water and says: let the earth be.[11] The second time he takes earth in both hands. He gives one handful to the god and hides the other in his mouth, to make a land of his own in secret from the god.[11] The god scatters the first, and firm earth appears. The earth in the man’s mouth grows. The man is near suffocation. He runs from the god and finds him wherever he looks, and at last he begs for help. The god asks him what he meant to do and tells him to spit it out. Small hills come from the earth.[12]

Then the god speaks. The man has sinned and thought evil against him, and the people who obey the man will think evil as well. The god takes the name of the true Kurbustan, and the man’s name is to be Erlik.[13] The text goes on to a tree with nine branches and nine men, to Erlik’s attempt to win the new people, and to the story of the forbidden fruit. In that story a snake and a dog stand guard. A man, Törüngey, and his wife Eje eat what is forbidden, and Erlik tempts them.[14] After that Mandyshirä, the god’s own man, goes to war against Erlik, who has set his servants in the heavens. Mandyshirä brings the heavens down, and they make the mountains.[15]

A summary of the Altaian material gives a telling of the same shape and cites another page of Radloff’s collection. The god and the first man fly over the primal sea as two black geese. The man tries to rise above the god and falls. He sits on a stone and dives for earth, and he hides a handful in his mouth. What he spits out becomes the hummocks of the moss.[16]

Verbitskii’s version

Verbitskii printed a different account in his book of 1893.[17] In it there is no earth and no heaven. There is only Ülgen, whose Oirot name is Kurbustan, hovering like a bat over a boundless sea and without a place to stand.[18] A voice in him said “grasp what is before you.” He stretched out his hand and caught a stone that stood out of the water. He sat on it and thought what he should make and how.[18] Then Ak-ene, the white mother, came up out of the water. She told him that whatever he thought of making, he should say only “I made it” and “it is done”, and never say that it had not been done. She vanished and was never seen again.[18]

Ülgen said “let the earth be made”, and it was made. He said “let heaven be made”, and it was made.[19] He made three great fish in the sea and fixed the earth on them. The one in the middle stands with its head to the north. A rope through its gills runs up to heaven, where Mandyshire lets it out or draws it in. When he slackens the rope, the earth tilts and floods come. The flood of the whole world came so.[20] During the whole creation Ülgen stayed on a golden mountain where sun and moon shine. The work lasted six days. He slept on the seventh and rose on the eighth.[20]

Erlik comes later and in another way. Ülgen saw a mass of earth floating on the sea like an ice floe. On it lay a layer of clay that looked like the frame of a man. He cut the layer off as with scissors and said: what is this soulless thing, let it be a man.[21] He named this first rational creature Erlik, a word that Verbitskii glosses as manly, and left it. The rest of the mass became a great fish, the taimen.[21] Erlik looked about and found Ülgen, and he was first his companion and younger brother. Then he began to put himself on a level with Ülgen. He thought with envy that he would like to make such creatures as Ülgen made, or better ones. He drew away from Ülgen in heart and became his adversary and the enemy of all his creatures.[21] Ülgen then made another companion for himself, the hero Mandyshire, out of metal drawn from a stone. Mandyshire was to stand against Erlik.[21]

The rest of Verbitskii’s account runs on through a long sequel. Ülgen makes seven men and seven trees, with bones of reed and flesh of clay, and breathes into their ears and noses. The eighth man, Maidere, is set on the golden mountain.[22] Erlik breathes a soul into a woman whom Maidere’s dog was set to guard. The dog, bribed with a coat, lets him in.[23] Erlik is driven away. He returns, plants a tree whose fruit enters the one who eats it, and is driven away again.[24] First food, fire from a white and a black stone, and death follow.[25] Erlik builds a heaven for himself. Mandyshire destroys it, and Erlik’s servants fall to earth.[26]

The version of Potanin

A third version comes from Potanin’s report on north-western Mongolia, printed in its fourth volume in 1883.[27] In it, when there was no earth and no heaven but only water, Ülgen came down onto the water to make the earth. He thought and thought and could not see how to begin.[28] Then “Man” came to him and said that he too had come to make land. Ülgen was angry: even he could not do it, how could Man? Man answered that he knew where to get earth.[28] Ülgen bade him fetch it. Man dived at once, found a mountain on the bottom and broke a piece from it, which he put in his mouth. On the surface he gave Ülgen a part. The rest stayed in his mouth. When Man spat it out at last, swamps and bogs appeared on the earth.[29]

A further variant has Ülgen see a mass of mud with human features floating on the ocean. He gives it a spirit, and the being so made is Erlik, at first God’s friend and brother and later his enemy.[30] The variant is close to the story that Verbitskii prints.[31]

The diver

The first man dives in Radloff’s account in Aus Sibirien, in the two tellings cited from the Proben and in Potanin’s. In Potanin’s the diver is simply “Man”.[32] The creator is Kaira Kan in Radloff’s account and Ülgen in Potanin’s. In the text with two dives he is Kuday and takes the name Kurbustan.[33] In Verbitskii’s account neither the first man nor the creator dives. The creator finds his stone by grasping before him.[18]

The compendia of the twentieth century give the dive to Kayra Khan himself. In the waters before heaven and earth, they say, he dived into the depth and brought a handful of earth to the surface.[34] In the records of Radloff and Potanin the diver is the first man, who becomes Erlik. Turkic Atlas follows the divergence further under Ülgen and Kayra Khan.

Erlik in the story

In every version of the tale Erlik is the figure who wants a creation of his own. In Radloff’s account he hides earth to make a land and later builds a heaven.[35] In Verbitskii’s he envies Ülgen’s creatures and in time builds a heaven too, and Mandyshire strikes it down.[36] In Potanin’s the hidden mouthful of earth is what makes the bogs.[29] Comparative studies say that in the Altaian tales the first man falls through his pride and boastfulness. God casts him into the depth, where he is now the ruler of the spirits in the realm of death.[37]

Radloff sets the later Erlik beside the creation story. Erlik Khan is the lord of the realm of darkness, and Radloff says that Bai Ülgän himself made him. Erlik sits on a black throne in the fifth or the ninth layer of the underworld, surrounded by his court of evil spirits. Below him lies the hell where the sinners are punished.[38] The two statements about his making do not agree. In the creation story Kaira Kan makes the man who becomes Erlik. Here Bai Ülgän makes Erlik.[39] Radloff does not remark on it. He also reports that Erlik is feared and still called Father, because all belong to him and he in the end destroys all life.[38] Every man has two companions at birth, one that writes down his good acts and one that writes down his bad. At death the soul is brought before Erlik’s judgment seat in the seventh layer of the underworld.[40]

Verbitskii says that the Altaians hold that two principles rule the world, Ülgen the good and Erlik the evil. Erlik is so evil that he cannot help doing harm. He postpones his hostility only at times.[41] The Altaians sacrifice to him often, as to an evil dog, at every attack. Any beast will do, or home-brewed beer where there is none.[42] Ülgen and Erlik, the Altaians say, have one door. When Ülgen has waited in vain for a sacrifice and cannot himself punish, he tells Erlik, and Erlik has the defaulter punished.[42] Verbitskii ends Erlik’s story with a speech. Ülgen has cast Erlik and his servants from heaven to earth, where they fell in forty-three places. Erlik will send forty-three kinds of servants to harm men at those places.[43]

Layers and parallels

The story is not self-contained. Radloff finds in it traces of the Mosaic account and of Buddhism, and he names Mandyshirä and Mai-Tärä as Buddhist figures.[9] A Turkish study holds that the tales of the Altai and the Yenisei were shaped by Hindu, Iranian and Jewish stories. Accordingly the gods Maitreya and Mangdashire are Indian, Kuday, Körmös and Kurbustan are Iranian, and the expulsion of Törüngey and Eje for eating forbidden fruit is Jewish.[44] The same study notes that the cosmogony of the Turkic shamanists does not know creation from nothing. Even the first gods had material at hand to shape.[44]

A comparative synthesis puts the dive for earth among the most widespread patterns in Asian creation tales. It sets the Altaian versions beside others.[45] The Yakut tell of Yryn-Ajy-Tojon, who moves above the ocean and sees a bubble that turns out to be Satan. Satan dives and brings a piece of earth. He plots to drown the god by stretching the land, but the land grows stronger and covers much of the water.[45] A variant of it has Satan as the elder brother of Christ. Satan dives three times, the third time as a swallow, and hides part of the mud in his throat. Christ strikes him on the neck, and the mud squirts out and makes the mountains.[46] The synthesis finds that these Yakut tales coincide in every detail with the apocryphal creation tales of Eastern Europe. It concludes that the Yakut probably learned them from the Russians.[46]

A Buryat tale of the Alarsk district has the devil Sholmo appear beside Burkhan and offer to fetch the earth. As his reward he asks for land and receives as much as he can plant his staff in. Reptiles and snakes creep out of the hole.[47] Erlik asks for the same staff-sized land in Verbitskii’s account, and from the staff he draws a boar, a snake and a frog.[43] In the Altaian variants a swallow brings peat. In a North Russian variant God and the devil are a white and a black diving duck.[48]

The same synthesis traces the pair of a good and a hostile first being back to Iran. It names the doctrine of Zarathustra, the teaching of Mani and the Bogomil sects of Bulgaria, in which God has two sons, the elder Satanael and the younger Christ.[49] The synthesis takes Erlik’s fall to reflect the old Iranian first man, who by sin became the first to die and the head of the dead.[50] A Turkish study of Erlik sees the creation story as one of the Altaian expressions of a duality of good and evil common to many cosmogonies.[51]

The inscriptions and the later story

The Old Turkic corpus has one cosmogonic sentence. The Kül Tegin and Bilge Khan inscriptions open with it. When the blue sky above and the brown earth below were made, between the two the sons of men were made, and over the sons of men sat Bumin Khan and Istemi Khan.[4] The verb is passive. The inscriptions name no maker, no water, no dive and no Erlik.[4]

A lord of the dead appears in Old Uyghur texts under the name Ärklig. Scholars argue whether the Altaian Erlik continues him. The creation story itself is first recorded in the nineteenth century. It cannot be dated to the khaganates, and none of its figures can be traced there.

Names

  • Tengere Kaira KanAltaian
  • KishiAltaian
  • ErlikAltaian
  • KurbustanAltaian

The names are Altaian and belong to the record of the nineteenth century. Radloff glosses Kaira Kan as the gracious heaven. Kishi is the word for man.[6] In Verbitskii, Kurbustan is the Oirot name of Ülgen. It is also the name the god takes in the text with two dives.[18] Erlik is glossed by Verbitskii as manly.[21]

Use as evidence

The story is a good record of how the Altaians of the nineteenth century told the making of the earth, with its variants, its borrowings and its contradictions. Radloff, Verbitskii and Potanin each took down a different telling, and the question of who dives has more than one answer.[52] The tale cannot be carried back to the Göktürks. The inscriptions name no one who made the sky and the earth. The dive, the first man and Erlik of the Altaian tales come from a later layer of Altaian belief.

References

  1. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 3–5; 89–91; Verbitskii 1893, p. 3–5; 89–91
  2. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 3–4
  3. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 89–91
  4. ^ a b c Kül Tegin inscription; Bilge Khan inscription
  5. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 3
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 4
  7. ^ a b c d e f Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 5
  8. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 6
  9. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 5–6
  10. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 14–19
  11. ^ a b c d İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 14
  12. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 14–15
  13. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 15
  14. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 15–16
  15. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 16–17
  16. ^ Harva 1938, p. 97
  17. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 89–100
  18. ^ a b c d e Verbitskii 1893, p. 89
  19. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 89–90
  20. ^ a b Verbitskii 1893, p. 90
  21. ^ a b c d e Verbitskii 1893, p. 91
  22. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 91–92
  23. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 92–93
  24. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 94–95
  25. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 97–98
  26. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 99–100
  27. ^ Holmberg 1927, p. 314–315, n. 4
  28. ^ a b Holmberg 1927, p. 314–315
  29. ^ a b Holmberg 1927, p. 315
  30. ^ Holmberg 1927, p. 316
  31. ^ Holmberg 1927, p. 316; 91; Verbitskii 1893, p. 316; 91
  32. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 4; 14; 97; 314–315; İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 4; 14; 97; 314–315; Harva 1938, p. 4; 14; 97; 314–315; Holmberg 1927, p. 4; 14; 97; 314–315
  33. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 3–4; 314–315; 14–15; Holmberg 1927, p. 3–4; 314–315; 14–15; İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 3–4; 314–315; 14–15
  34. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 165
  35. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 4–5
  36. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 91; 99–100
  37. ^ Holmberg 1927, p. 316; 95; Harva 1938, p. 316; 95
  38. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 10
  39. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 4, 10
  40. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 11–12
  41. ^ Verbitskii 1893, p. 43
  42. ^ a b Verbitskii 1893, p. 44
  43. ^ a b Verbitskii 1893, p. 100
  44. ^ a b İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 13
  45. ^ a b Holmberg 1927, p. 313
  46. ^ a b Holmberg 1927, p. 314
  47. ^ Holmberg 1927, p. 315; 94; Harva 1938, p. 315; 94
  48. ^ Harva 1938, p. 96–97
  49. ^ Holmberg 1927, p. 315–317; 95–96; Harva 1938, p. 315–317; 95–96
  50. ^ Holmberg 1927, p. 316; 95–96; Harva 1938, p. 316; 95–96
  51. ^ Demirlikan 2022, p. 73–77
  52. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 4; 89; Verbitskii 1893, p. 4; 89

Sources

Literature

  • Wilhelm Radloff, Aus Sibirien. Lose Blätter aus meinem Tagebuche. Zweiter Band (1893 (zweite Ausgabe))
  • Vasilii Ivanovich Verbitskii, Алтайские инородцы (Altai Foreigners) (1893)
  • Uno Holmberg (Harva), The Mythology of All Races, Volume IV: Finno-Ugric, Siberian (1927)
  • Uno Harva, Die religiösen Vorstellungen der altaischen Völker (1938)
  • Abdülkadir İnan, Tarihte ve Bugün Şamanizm: Materyaller ve Araştırmalar (2017; first edition 1954)
  • Yasemin Usta Demirlikan, Türk Mitolojisinin Yer Altı Kötücüsü „Erlik Han“ (2022)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)

Related

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Religions
Ülgen and Kayra Khan

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Altaian Creation Story.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/religions/altaian-creation-story/

Last revised: 8 November 2026