Dayan Deerh

In local sacral texts and shamanic accounts collected from Khövsgöl (as recorded by Ágnes Birtalan), Dayan Deerh is portrayed in narratives that link him to the founding or protection of political power: one tradition describes him as a shaman who eloped with Genghis Khan's wife or daughter (sources give both variants) and then entered into a pact with the Khan that made him protector of the Khan and his people. Another element reported in sacral materials is that Dayan Deerh once 'turned himself into a stone statue' venerated at Tsagaannuur. These origin motifs come from Birtalan's collected sacral texts and shamanic invocations rather than a single unified mythic corpus.

Iconography and cult material depict Dayan Deerh most commonly as equestrian, mounted on a horse and wearing typically Mongolian accoutrements such as boots; in some statues he is shown with a warrior helmet. He is typically shown with a triple shamanic feather crown that includes three mirrors; in at least one scroll image he carries a mirror around his neck and wears a beaded necklace, an element interpreted as indicating coexistence of Buddhist and shamanic symbolism. Material forms in cult space have included a stone statue venerated at Tsagaannuur and a Buddhist warrior-god statue in a cave shrine covered by khatas.

Tradition attributes fertility-bestowing functions to Dayan Deerh—he 'granted cattle and children to people'—and a role as shamanic patron, invoked in initiation and protective rites. He is described as a protector of communities and practitioners (including having become protector of Genghis Khan and his people after a pact). Mythic accounts assert a special invulnerability: he can only be killed by suffocation; 'fire and metal cannot hurt him,' a claim framed in sources as part of the tradition's narrative motifs. His cult functions both within yellow shamanism and among some black shamans, though his Buddhist associations make him contested by other practitioners.