Arsan Duolai

Deep under the Middle World, beneath a stone vault that is also the roof of his house, an old man lies listening to footsteps. Somewhere above him two heroes have been fighting for days, and every blow comes down through the rock and into his skull. His liver shakes. The back of his head aches, his temples throb, and his eyes are pushing out of their sockets. This is Arsan Duolai, lord of the Lower World in the heroic poetry of the Sakha of Yakutia, and at this moment what he wants most is a quiet night.

He lives in the olonkho, the long sung epics of the Sakha, a Turkic-speaking people of northeastern Siberia. The epics divide the universe into three: an Upper World of the gods, a Middle World where people live, and a Lower World beneath it, and the heroes sent down from above spend their lives clearing the monsters of the Lower World out of the middle one. The fullest single portrait of Arsan Duolai comes from Nyurgun Bootur the Swift, the epic that the Sakha writer Platon Oyunsky built and wrote down from many olonkho variants in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and which Vladimir Derzhavin put into Russian verse in 1975. That text is one man’s composition drawn from many singers, but it is not the only witness. The folklorist S. S. Makarov, surveying a wide sample of recorded epics in 2023, finds the same lord of the Lower World across them, with details Oyunsky never uses.

The epic sets him near the beginning of things. Its opening lines reach back to an age before the thirty-five human tribes of the Middle World existed, long before the birth of Arsan Duolai, who stirred up the worlds with his crimes. He came into the world in his underworld already wearing a shedding fur coat, a giant with tusks like fish-spears. His wife is the old woman Ala Buurai, who was born with a wooden stock clamped on her feet, and between them they produced thirty-six clans. A later passage gives him his titles in full: root of all the adyarai tribes, father of the underground abaasy, toyon and ruler of the Lower World, the giant Luogayar Luo Khaan. The sources count the family differently. The Soviet encyclopedia Myths of the Peoples of the World makes him the head of eight clans of evil spirits, with a wife and seven sons, each son the head of a clan of his own.

His names do some of the describing. Makarov notes that researchers derive Arsan from a verb meaning to bare the teeth, and that some epic texts call him Ala Mogoi, the Pied Serpent. Another part of his compound name, Buor Mangylai, means Earthen Belly, which is how the encyclopedia glosses him as well: lord earthen belly. The serpent is an odd choice for Yakutia, where snakes are all but absent from the natural world and the Sakha word for one, mogoi, is a loan from Mongolian. Even so, a long tongue in the shape of a living snake is a frequent detail of his portrait, and Ala Buurai, whose name means grey-pied, carries serpentine features too.

Put together, the picture is part man, part animal and wholly unwelcome. A son of the abaasy, boasting to a hero in Oyunsky’s first song, describes his father as a hardened old man with a tail like an iron fish-spear and tusks sticking out of his mouth, and his mother as crooked in the shin with an iron beak. The encyclopedia puts the family home at the very bottom of the underground realm, beside a mire so thick that even spiders sink in it. In the epic the Lower World has its own abysses, Chyorkyochyokh and Ap-Salbanyky, and even its own sun, which the old lord calls “my iron sun”.

The adyarai who count him as their ancestor behave the way he taught them. In the first song they pad about on fur soles, creeping without a sound at night, and make their plan in plain words: rob the aiyy people, then drop back into the underworld, where nobody can easily follow. Arsan Duolai remembers doing it himself. When he was young and strong, he says, he went out at night against the tribes of the aiyy, snatching and killing. It did not work. Their fate held, and he could not trample their fame.

The central episode of his story is a father’s failure. His son Esekh Kharbyyr, a sorcerer with three shadows, kept climbing up to the Middle World. For eight days Arsan Duolai begged and threatened him to stop, swearing by the jagged sun, the hunchbacked moon and his own sacrificial cattle, and warning him that a new giant had appeared in the Upper World, Nyurgun Bootur the Swift. The son did not listen. Nyurgun Bootur came down, and the two fought in the Lower World until the stone dome of the old man’s fortress rocked. His lament at that moment is a bleak inventory of his own people: born in shedding fur, with wooden stocks on their legs, nine days at a time without food or drink, crusted with soot three spans thick above and mould seven spans thick below, sleeping on ice and sitting on the blood of their victims. His cries brought the shamans of the underground abysses up to watch. He called on the lords of fate to take the fighters somewhere else, and in the end a force did lift the two heroes, still locked together, and set them down on the sacred mountain where the moon is born. They went on fighting there, and the damage spread through all three worlds anyway.

By the last song he has lost more. His sons Uot Usutaaky and Esekh Kharbyyr are dead, and his third son, Alyp Khara, has had his six arms, six legs and three heads cut off, the heads raised on three poles. The old lord weeps, then bargains. He asks Yuryung Aar Toyon, the white lord of the sky, to move the aiyy heroes away, and gives him three days. After that, he says, he will curse them and order two ilbis, spirits of war, to spear the rider of the black horse and the warrior maiden Kyys Nyurgun between the shoulder blades and throw them head first into a bottomless bog of fire. It is a large threat from someone who has just lost three sons.

Outside the epics the record is thinner. Myths of the Peoples of the World says the Sakha held his spirits responsible for a range of calamities, and that getting rid of trouble meant offering blood sacrifices of livestock to Arsan Duolai and the spirits under him. It names no rite, place or season. Makarov adds that the Sakha placed abaasy in all three worlds, so the upper ones have an ancestor of their own, Uluu Toyon, whose wife bears the serpent name Uorda Mogoi, Fierce Snake. The two couples mirror each other, one above and one below.

His power is the power of a founder. Every raiding clan of the Lower World descends from him and Ala Buurai, his curse is something he expects even the lord of the sky to take seriously, and his voice can raise the shamans of the abyss. His weakness is that he never wins. By his own account the aiyy were too strong for him in his youth and are stronger now, his sons ignore his orders, and a single hero fighting overhead is enough to make him wonder whether his iron sun is about to break loose and fall.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Arsan Duolai in Yakut mythology?

Arsan Duolai is the lord of the Lower World in the olonkho, the heroic epics of the Sakha (Yakut) people of Siberia. He is the ancestor of the adyarai and abaasy, the demonic clans who raid the Middle World where people live.

Who is Arsan Duolai’s wife?

Arsan Duolai’s wife is the old woman Ala Buurai, whose name means grey-pied. In Platon Oyunsky’s epic Nyurgun Bootur the Swift she was born with a wooden stock on her feet, and together they produced the thirty-six clans of the Lower World.

What does Arsan Duolai look like?

The epics describe Arsan Duolai as a giant born in a shedding fur coat, with tusks like fish-spears and a tail like an iron fish-spear. Many recorded olonkho also give him a long tongue in the shape of a living snake.

What happens to Arsan Duolai in Nyurgun Bootur the Swift?

Arsan Duolai tries and fails to stop his son Esekh Kharbyyr from raiding the Middle World, and the hero Nyurgun Bootur follows the son down and fights him in the Lower World. By the end of the epic Arsan Duolai has lost three sons, Uot Usutaaky, Esekh Kharbyyr and Alyp Khara, and threatens to curse the heroes of the Upper World.

Did the Sakha make offerings to Arsan Duolai?

Yes. According to the Soviet encyclopedia Myths of the Peoples of the World, the Sakha believed the spirits under Arsan Duolai caused misfortunes, and they offered blood sacrifices of cattle to him and his spirits to be rid of them.

Related Entries

Abaasy, Aiyy, Erlik, Bai-Ülgen, Tengri, Umay, Num, Esege Malan, Ke’lets, Yelbeghen, Hades, Ereshkigal, Hel, Mictlantecuhtli, Yama