Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem

Also Known As: Mong Leng Nyaj Vaab Tuam Teem, Nyawj Vaab Tuam Teem, Nyuj Vaab Laug; the name carries Chinese Yanwang Da Dian, “King Yama’s Great Palace”
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Miao-Yao Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He holds the register of human lifespans and issues the licence that permits a soul to be born again.
Role in Mythos: He is the second of the two lords of the Hmong otherworld, the clerk at the desk where rebirth is granted, withheld or delayed.
Relation to Humans: Every person passes his desk twice, once to draw a term of years and once to surrender it when the term runs out. Shamans approach him on working terms, pleading the case of the untimely dead and asking for papers that let them search his enclosure for a patient’s strayed soul.

Above the stockade of Ntxwj Nyoog, past the mountain of stinging caterpillars that only hemp slippers will carry a soul across, the road climbs once more and forks, and at the end of the fork there is a cave, and inside the cave there is an office. A desk stands in it, a large one. Behind the desk is a throne described as magnificent and terrifying at once. Behind the throne sits the whole apparatus of a civil service: registers, terms of years, permits with expiry dates, a gate where judgement is passed and a doorkeeper posted at it. The Hmong otherworld is a bureaucracy, modelled on the Chinese one and inverted, and Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem is the official who signs.

His name is a sentence that stopped being a sentence. Nyaj Vaab, in the Mong Leng spelling, is Chinese Yanwang, King Yama, an identification David Crockett Graham drew from his work among the Ch’uan Miao and published in 1954. Tuam Teem carries the Chinese for great palace. Jacques Lemoine, recording shamans who described the journey through the beyond, found them saying that once past Ntxwj Nyoog one climbs to the Great Palace of Nyaj Vaab, and noticed that Hmong speakers do not take the phrase apart. The palace has been absorbed into the god. In India and in China, Yama rules beneath the earth. In Hmong telling he lives in the sky, which is roughly what happens to any foreign official who is naturalised: the title survives, the address changes.

Nusit Chindarsi, working with Green Hmong in the mountains above Chiang Mai in the 1960s, set down how the office operates. A soul cleared for rebirth is brought in and told to pick a licence. The licences are not identical. Some run a very long time, some terminate almost at once, and the soul drawing one has no way of telling which it has taken. When the licence expires, the holder dies. A human lifespan, in this account, is fixed in advance and decided by the luck of the draw, and the whole of it is written down somewhere before the person concerned has drawn breath. Patricia Symonds, in a White Hmong village in northern Thailand, recorded the name of the volumes it is written in: ntawv pe nyaj vaab tuam teem, the register books.

Not everyone reaches the drawing. Thieves and murderers are held back and set to pounding rice for the people of the sky until the sentence is served, the dull thud of the pestle going on year after year in a place nobody living has seen. A Mong Leng story about two brothers, Big Yob and Little Yob, brings a man to Nyaj Vaab Tuam Teem’s gate of heaven bound hand and foot in iron chains, asking why he has been brought. The doorkeeper shouts across the yard that this one has done no wrong, and the prisoner is released, and papers are drawn up for him to be reborn as a high official. The wicked in the same story get the other outcome. He looses wasps and giant hornets on them to sting, and mosquitoes to bite them without mercy, and takes four iron chains and binds their four limbs until they cannot move.

Shamans visit him on business. Lemoine’s account of the Green Mong shaman’s road describes the path rising, the fork, and the cave where Nyuj Vaab Laug keeps his office and summons souls to decide between life and death. He deals with the untimely dead, and he deals with them badly from their point of view. Someone killed by accident arrives early, and the arrival does not match the term written on the permit, so he will not send them on. He holds them until a shaman pleads their case and makes reparatory offerings, then dispatches them to rebirth by a short route. He also keeps an enclosure. Strayed souls end up in it, the one named for the reindeer, the one named for the fleeing buffalo, and a shaman hunting a sick patient’s missing soul must ask him to check the pen and to prepare the papers authorising a search.

Nicholas Tapp, whose 1989 survey of Hmong religion remains the standard English account, places him as the second of the two dreaded lords of the otherworld. Ntxwj Nyug sits on the mountain and judges, deciding whether a soul returns as a human, an animal or a vegetable, or rests. Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem issues the licences for rebirth from behind the desk. The two together are the pair who control life and death, and once a person’s licence for life has run out, only a shaman can sometimes bargain an extension.

Who does what varies. Chindarsi’s informants gave the interviewing of the dead to Nyaj Vaab and made him the god beneath Nyooglaug. Symonds heard the licences issued by Ntxwj Nyug out of books that nonetheless bear Nyaj Vaab Tuam Teem’s name. Tapp divides it the other way again. The accounts agree completely on the institution and disagree on which desk it sits at, which is what happens to an oral tradition spread across southern China, Laos, Thailand and the diaspora, and which is especially what happens to a god whose entire function is administrative. Reshuffling the duties of an office is the easiest thing in the world to do by accident.

No source describes his body. They describe his furniture. The throne, the desk, the gate, the chains on the floor, the cold fork in the path, the enclosure out back with something moving in it. The most vivid word anyone attaches to his appearance is terrifying, and it is attached to the chair.

His power is entirely a power of record. He does not hunt anybody and he does not need to, because the term of every life is already in his keeping and expires on its own schedule; the sanction is simply that the paperwork runs out. He can withhold rebirth, extend a term, punish by delay, and set the route a soul takes back to the world. What he cannot do is act alone. His authority is delegated, and the sources that put him under Ntxwj Nyug or under Nyooglaug are describing a deputy, not a sovereign. His own record can be amended, which is the entire basis of Hmong shamanic practice: a shaman who knows the road, brings the offerings and argues well enough can get a file reopened, a case reheard, a permit stamped again. Even the doorkeeper at his gate can contradict him in front of a prisoner. So a chicken is killed in a house on a mountainside, and a man who has been sliding downhill for a month sits up and asks for food.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem?

Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem is one of the two lords of the otherworld in Hmong belief, the official who issues licences for rebirth. He is described seated on a magnificent and terrifying throne behind a great writing desk, and he works alongside Ntxwj Nyug, who judges the dead. Together the pair control life and death.

What does Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem actually do?

He holds the register of human lifespans and hands out the licence that permits a soul to be born again. According to Green Hmong accounts recorded by Nusit Chindarsi, a soul ready for rebirth is told to pick a licence, and since some run for many years and others expire quickly, the length of a human life is a matter of the draw. When a licence expires, its holder dies.

Is Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem the same as the Chinese King Yama?

The name comes from the Chinese for King Yama’s Great Palace, and the Hmong figure is a naturalised version of that Chinese and ultimately Indian deity. The differences are real, though. Yama rules beneath the earth in Indian and Chinese belief, while Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem lives in the sky, and Hmong speakers treat the whole phrase, palace included, as a single personal name.

Can anyone bargain with Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem?

Yes, and that is what Hmong shamans are for. A shaman can plead the case of someone who died before their written term expired, make reparatory offerings, and get the soul released for rebirth by a short route. A shaman can also ask him to search his enclosure for a sick person’s strayed soul and to prepare papers authorising the search.

What does Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem look like?

No Hmong source describes his face or body. The accounts give his setting instead: a great writing desk, a throne called magnificent and terrifying, a gate of heaven where judgement is passed, and an office inside a cave reached by a forking mountain path.