Pazon Koy

The Erzya are a Mordvinic people of the middle Volga who speak a Uralic language. Their tradition names Nishke, or Nishkepaz, as the originating god.

In Erzya myth the high gods hatched from an egg. Ange Patiai is the mother of the gods, followed by the Sun god Chipaz, who begot Nishkepaz, the earth god Mastoron Kirdi and the wind god Varmanpaz. From Chipaz and the Harvest Mother Norovava came Mastorpaz, lord of the underworld.

The Mordvins fell under the Golden Horde in the thirteenth century, and after Russia took Kazan in 1552 they were all Russian subjects. Russian Orthodoxy converted them by force, notably in the seventeenth century, yet a few villages kept the old faith.