translation of his book, published the same year, introduced the word shaman to English speakers. Anthropologist and archeologist Silvia Tomaskova argued that by the mid-1600s, many Europeans applied the Arabic term shaitan (meaning "devil") to the non-Christian practices and beliefs of Indigenous peoples beyond the Ural Mountains. She suggests that shaman may have entered the various Tungus dialects as a corruption of this term, and then been told to Christian missionaries, explorers, soldiers and colonial administrators with whom the people had increasing contact for centuries. A female shaman is sometimes called a , which is not an actual Tungus term but simply shaman plus the Russian suffix (for feminine nouns). Definitions There is no single agreed-upon definition for the word "shamanism" among anthropologists. Thomas Downson suggests three shared elements of shamanism: practitioners consistently alter consciousness, the community regards altering consciousness as an important ritual practice, and the knowledge about the practice is controlled. The English historian Ronald Hutton noted that by the dawn of the 21st century, there were four separate definitions of the term which appeared to be in use: The first of these uses the term to refer to "anybody who contacts a spirit world while in an altered state of consciousness". The second definition limits the term to refer to those who contact a spirit world while in an altered state of consciousness at the behest of others. The third definition attempts to distinguish shamans from other magicoreligious specialists who are believed to contact spirits, such as "mediums", "witch doctors", "spiritual healers" or "prophets," by claiming that shamans undertake some particular technique not used by the others. (Problematically, scholars advocating the third view have failed to agree on what the defining technique should be.) The fourth definition identified by Hutton uses "shamanism" to refer to the Indigenous religions of Siberia and neighboring parts of Asia. According to the Golomt Center for Shamanic Studies, a Mongolian organization of shamans, the Evenk word shaman would more accurately be translated as "priest". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a shaman ( , or ) is someone who is regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits, who typically enters into a trance state during a ritual, and practices divination and healing. The word "shaman" probably originates from the Tungusic Evenki language of North Asia. According to Juha Janhunen, "the word is attested in