A Relative of Tengri, Not a Duplicate

Comparative scholarship on Inner Asian religion generally treats Ulgen as closely related to, though not simply identical with, the more widely attested Tengri of the broader Turkic and Mongolic steppe tradition, reflecting how a shared underlying sky-god concept could develop locally distinct names, emphases and ritual practices among specific peoples, in this case the Altai and neighbouring South Siberian Turkic groups, without becoming a wholly different figure. Where Tengri appears chiefly in the political and imperial register, granting kingship to khans across a vast steppe empire, Ulgen appears chiefly in the intimate, local register of the shaman's own ecstatic practice on behalf of a specific community, and Eliade's survey of shamanism treats this difference in register, imperial sky god versus shaman's sky god, as a genuinely useful way to see how one broad Inner Asian sky-worship tradition took different practical shapes depending on the social structure, whether steppe empire or smaller Siberian hunting and herding community, that carried it forward.