Iranian Mythology by Albert j. Carnoy

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I. WARS OF GODS AND DEMONS
CHAPTER II. MYTHS OF CREATION
CHAPTER III. THE PRIMEVAL HEROES
CHAPTER IV. LEGENDS OF YIMA
CHAPTER V. TRADITIONS OF THE KINGS AND ZOROASTER
CHAPTER VI. THE LIFE TO COME
CHAPTER VII. CONCLUSION

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE purpose of this essay on Iranian mythology is exactly set forth by its title : it is a reasonably complete account of what is mythological in Iranian traditions, but it is nothing more; since it is exclusively concerned with myths, all that is properly religious, historical, or archaeological has intentionally been omitted. This is, indeed, the first attempt of its kind, for although there are several excellent delineations of Iranian customs and of Zoroastrian beliefs, they mention the myths only secondarily and because they have a bearing on those customs and beliefs. The consequent inconveniences for the student of mythology, in the strict sense of the term, are obvious, and his difficulties are increased by the fact that, with few exceptions, these studies are either concerned with the religious history of Iran and for the most part refer solely to the older period, or are devoted to Persian literature and give only brief allusions to Mazdean times.

Though we must congratulate the Warners for their illuminating prefaces to the various chapters of their translation of the Shdhndmah, it is evident that too little has thus far been done to connect the Persian epic with Avestic myths.

None the less, the value and the interest presented by a study of Iranian mythology is of high degree, not merely from a specialist's point of view for knowledge of Persian civilization and mentality, but also for the material which it provides for mythologists in general. Nowhere else can we so clearly follow the myths in their gradual evolution toward legend and traditional history. We may often trace the same stories from the period of living and creative mythology in the Vedas through the Avestic times of crystallized and systematized myths to the theological and mystic accounts of the Pahlavi books, and finally to the epico-historic legends of Firdausi.

There is no doubt that such was the general movement in the development of the historic stories of Iran. Has the evolution sometimes operated in the reverse direction? Dr. L. H. Gray, who knows much about Iranian mythology, seems to think so in connexion with the myth of Yima, for in his article on "Blest, Abode of the (Persian)," in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ii. 702-04 (Edinburgh, 1909), he presents an interesting hypothesis by which Yima's successive openings of the world to cultivation would appear to allude to Aryan migrations. It has seemed to me that this story has, rather, a mythical character, in conformity with my interpretation of Yima's personality; but in any event a single case would not alter our general conclusions regarding the course of the evolution of mythology in Persia.

Another point of interest presented by Iranian mythology is that it collects and unites into a coherent system legends from two sources which are intimately connected with the two great racial elements of our civilization. The Aryan myths of the Vedas appear in Iran, but are greatly modified by the influence of the neighbouring populations of the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates Sumerians, Assyrians, etc.

Occasional comparisons of Persian stories with Vedic myths or Babylonian legends have accordingly been introduced into the account of Iranian mythology to draw the reader's attention to curious coincidences which, in our present state of knowledge, have not yet received any satisfactory explanation.

In a paper read this year before the American Oriental Society I have sought to carry out this method of comparison in more systematic fashion, but studies of such a type find no place in the present treatise, which is strictly documentary and presen tational in character. The use of hypotheses has, therefore, been carefully restricted to what was absolutely required to present a consistent and rational account of the myths and to permit them to be classified according to their probable nature. Due emphasis has also been laid upon the great number of replicas of the same fundamental story. Throughout my work my personal views are naturally implied, but I have sought to avoid bold and hazardous hypotheses.

It has been my endeavour not merely to assemble the myths of Iran into a consistent account, but also to give a readable form to my expose, although I fear that Iranian mythology is often so dry that many a passage will seem rather insipid. If this impression is perhaps relieved in many places, that happy result is largely due to the poetic colouring of Darmesteter's translation of the Avesta and of the Warners version of the Shdhndmah.

The editor of the series has also employed his talent in versifying such of my quotations from the Avesta as are in poetry in the original.

In so doing he has, of course, adhered to the metre in which these portions of the Avesta are written, and which is familiar to English readers as being that of Longfellow's Hiawatha, as it is also that of the Finnish Kalevala. Where prose is mixed with verse in these passages Dr. Gray has reproduced the original commingling. While, however, I am thus indebted to him as well as to Darmesteter, Mills, Bartholomae, West, and the Warners for their meritorious translations, these versions have been compared in all necessary cases with the original texts.

My hearty gratitude is due to Professor A. V. Williams Jackson, who placed the library of the Indo-Iranian Seminar at Columbia University at my disposal and gave me negatives of photographs taken by him in Persia and used in his Persia Past and Present.

It is this hospitality and that of the University of Pennsylvania which have made it possible for me to pursue my researches after the destruction of my library in Louvain. Dr. Charles J. Ogden of New York City also helped me in many ways. For the colour-plates I am indebted to the courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the Persian manuscripts of the Shdhndmah were generously placed at my service; and the Open Court Publishing Company of Chicago has permitted the reproduction of four illustrations from their issue of The Mysteries of Mithra.

A. J. CARNOY. UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, I November, 1916.

INTRODUCTION

TECHNOLOGICALLY the Persians are closely akin to the Aryan races of India, and their religion, which shows many points of contact with that of the Vedic Indians, was dominant in Persia until the Muhammadan conquest of Iran in the seventh century of our era. One of the most exalted and the most inter esting religions of the ancient world, it has been for thirteen hundred years practically an exile from the land of its birth, but it has found a home in India, where it is professed by the relatively small but highly influential community of Parsis, who, as their name ("Persians") implies, are descendants of immigrants from Persia.

The Iranian faith is known to us both from the inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings (558-330 B.C.) and from the Avesta, the latter being an extensive collection of hymns, discourses, precepts for the religious life, and the like, the oldest portions dating back to a very early period, prior to the dominion of the great kings. The other parts are consider ably later and are even held by several scholars to have been written after the beginning of the Christian era. In the period of the Sassanians, who reigned from about 226 to 641 A.D., many translations of the Avesta and commentaries on it were made, the language employed in them being not Avesta (which is closely related to the Vedic Sanskrit tongue of India), but Pahlavi, a more recent dialect of Iranian and the older form of Modern Persian.

A large number of traditions concerning the Iranian gods and heroes have been preserved only in Pahlavi, es pecially in the Bundahish, or "Book of Creation." Moreover the huge epic in Modern Persian, written by the great poet Firdausi, who died about 1025 A.D., and known under the name of Shahndmah, or "Book of the Kings," has likewise rescued a great body of traditions and legends which would otherwise have passed into oblivion; and though in the epic these affect a more historical guise, in reality they are generally nothing but humanized myths.

This is not the place to give an account of the ancient Persian religion, since here we have to deal with mythology only. It will suffice, therefore, to recall that for the great kings as well as for the priests, who were followers of Zoroaster (A vesta Zarathushtra), the great prophet of Iran, no god can be compared with Ahura Mazda, the wise creator of all good beings. Under him are the Amesha Spentas, or "Immortal Holy Ones," and the Yazatas, or "Venerable Ones," who are secondary deities. The Amesha Spentas have two aspects. In the moral sphere they embody the essential attainments of religious life: "Righteousness" (Asha or Arta), "Good Mind" (Vohu Manah), "Desirable Kingdom" (Khshathra Vairya), "Wise Conduct" and "Devotion" (Spenta Armaiti), "Perfect Happiness" (Haurvatat), and "Immortality" (Ameretat).

In their material nature they preside over the whole world as guardians: Asha is the spirit of fire, Vohu Manah is the protector of domestic animals, Khshathra Vairya is the patron of metals, Spenta Armaiti presides over earth, Haurvatat over water, and Ameretat over plants.

The Amesha Spentas constitute Ahura Mazda's court, and it is through them that he governs the world and brings men to sanctity. Below Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas come the Yazatas, who are for the most part ancient Aryan divinities reduced in the Zoroastrian system to the rank of auxiliary angels. Of these we may mention Atar, the personification of that fire which plays so important a part in the Mazdean cult that its members have now become commonly, though quite erroneously, known as "Fire-Worshippers"; and by the side of the genius of fire is found one of water, Anahita.

Mithra is by all odds the most important Yazata. Although pushed by Zoroaster into the background, he always enjoyed a very popular cult among the people in Persia as the god of the plighted word, the protector of justice, and the deity who gives victory in battle against the foes of the Iranians and defends the worshippers of Truth and Righteousness (Asha). His cult spread, as is well known, at a later period into the Roman Empire, and he has as his satellites, to help him in his function of guardian of Law, Rashnu ("Justice") and Sraosha ("Discipline").

Under the gods are the spirits called Fravashis, who originally were the manes of ancestors, but in the Zoroastrian creed are genii, attached as guardians to all beings human and divine.

It is generally known that the typical feature of Mazdeism is dualism, or the doctrine of two creators and two creations. Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), with his host of Amesha Spentas and Yazatas, presides over the good creation and wages an incessant war against his counterpart Angra Mainyu (Ahriman) and the latter's army of noxious spirits.

The Principle of Evil has created darkness, suffering, and sins of all kinds; he is anxious to hurt the creatures of the good creation; he longs to enslave the faithful of Ahura Mazda by bringing them into falsehood or into some impure contact with an evil being; he is often called Druj ("Deception"). Under him are marshalled the daevas ("demons "), from six of whom a group has been formed explicitly antithetic to the Amesha Spentas. Among the demons are Aeshma ("Wrath, Violence"), Aka Manah ("Evil Mind"), Bushyasta ("Sloth"), Apaosha ("Drought"), and Nasu ("Corpse"), who takes hold of corpses and makes them impure, to say nothing of the Yatus ("sorcerers") and the Pairikas (Modern Persian pan, "fairy"), who are spirits of seduction. The struggle between the good and the evil beings, in which man takes part by siding, according to his conduct, with Ahura Mazda or with his foe, is to end with the victory of the former at the great renovation of the world, when a flood of molten metal will, as an ordeal, purify all men and bring about the complete exclusion of evil.

Dualism, having impregnated all Iranian beliefs, profoundly influenced the mythology of Iran as well or, more exactly, it was in their mythology that the people of ancient Persia found the germ that developed into religious dualism.

CHAPTER I. WARS OF GODS AND DEMONS

THE mythology of the Indians and the Iranians has given a wide extension to the conception of a struggle between light and darkness, this being the development of myths dating back to Indo-European times and found among all Indo- European peoples. Besides the cosmogonic stories in which monstrous giants are killed by the gods of sky or storm we have the myths of the storm and of the fire. In the former a heavenly being slays the dragon concealed in the cloud, whose waters now flow over the earth; or the god delivers from a monster the cows of the clouds that are imprisoned in some mountain or cavern, as, for example, in the legends concerning Herakles and Geryoneus or Cacus. ¹ In the second class of myths the fire of heaven, produced in the cloud or in an aerial sea, is brought to earth by a bird or by a daring human being like Prometheus.

All these myths tell of a struggle against powers of darkness for light or for blessings under the form of rain. They were eminently susceptible of being systematized in a dualistic form, and the strong tendency toward symbolism, observable both in old Indian (Vedic) and old Iranian conceptions, resulted in the association of moral ideas with the cosmic struggle, thus easily leading to dualism.

The recent discoveries in Boghaz Kyoi and elsewhere in the Near East have shown that the Indo-Iranians were in contact with Assyro-Babylonian culture at an early date, and there are many reasons for believing that their religious ideas were influenced by their neighbours, especially as regards the group of gods known in India as the Adityas, whose function is to be the guardians of the law (Sanskritrta Avesta asha) and of morality.²

Now, Babylonian mythology could only confirm the Indo-Iranians in their conceptions concerning the cosmic battle against maleficent forces or monstrous beings. Thus Assyro-Babylonian legends tell of the fight between Tiamat, a huge monster of forbidding aspect, embodying primeval chaos, and Marduk, a solar deity. As Professor Morris Jastrow suggests, ³ the myth is based upon the annual phenomenon witnessed in Babylonia when the whole valley is flooded, when storms sweep across the plains, and the sun is obscured. A conflict is going on between the waters and storms on the one hand, and the sun on the other; but the latter is finally victorious, for Marduk subdues Tiamat and triumphantly marches across the heavens from one end to the other as general overseer.

In other myths, more specifically those of the storm, the storm is represented by a bull, ⁴ an idea not far remote from the Indo-Iranian conception which identifies the storm-cloud with a cow or an ox. The storm-god is likewise symbolized under the form of a bird, a figure which we also find in Iranian myths, as when an eagle brings to the earth the fire of heaven, the lightning. Similarly in Babylonian mythology the bird Zu endeavours to capture the tablets of Fate from En-lil, and during the contest which takes place in heaven Zu seizes the tablets, which only Marduk can recover. Like the dragon who has hidden the cows, Zu dwells in an inaccessible recess in the mountains, and Ramman, the storm-god, is invoked to conquer him with his weapon, the thunderbolt. ⁵

Among the Indo-Iranians, the poetic imagination of the Vedic Indians has given the most complete description of the conflict in the storm-cloud. With his distinctive weapon, the vajra ("thunderbolt"), Indra slays the demon of drought called

Vrtra ("Obstruction") or Ahi ("Serpent"). The fight is terrible, so that heaven and earth tremble with fear. Indra is said to have slain the dragon lying on the mountain and to have released the waters (clouds); and owing to this victory Indra is frequently called Vrtrahan ("Slayer of Vrtra"). The Veda also knows of another storm-contest, very similar to this one and often assigned to Indra, although it properly belongs to Trita, the son of Aptya. This mighty hero is likewise the slayer of a dragon, the three-headed, six-eyed serpent Visvarupa. He released the cows which the monster was hiding in a cavern, and this cave is also a cloud, because in his fight Trita, whose weapon is again the thunderbolt, is said to be rescued by the winds. He lives in a secret abode in the sky and is the fire of heaven blowing from on high on the terres trial fire (agni), causing the flames to rise and sharpening them like a smelter in a furnace. ⁶ Trita has brought fire from heaven to earth and prepared the intoxicating draught of immortality, the soma that gives strength to Indra. ⁷

In Iran, Indra is practically excluded from the pantheon, being merely mentioned from time to time as a demon of Angra Mainyu. Trita, on the other hand, is known as a beneficent hero, one of the first priests who prepared haoma (the Indian soma), ⁸ the plant of life, and as such he is called the first healer, the wise, the strong "who drove back sickness to sickness, death to death." He asked for a source of remedies, and Ahura Mazda brought down the healing plants which by many myriads grew up all around the tree Gaokerena, or White Haoma. ⁹ Thus, under the name of Thrita (Sanskrit Trita) he is the giver of the beverage made from the juice of the marvellous plant that grows on the summits of mountains, just as Trita is in India¹⁰.

Under the appellation of Thraetaona, son of Athwya (Sanskrit Aptya), another preparer of haoma, ¹¹ he smote the dragon Azhi Dahaka, three-jawed and triple-headed, six-eyed, with mighty strength, an imp of the spirit of deceit created by Angra Mainyu to slaughter Iranian settlements and to murder the faithful of Asha ("Justice"), the scene of the struggle being "the four-cornered Varena," a mythical, remote region. Like the storm-gods and the bringers of fire, Thraetaona sometimes reveals himself in the shape of a bird, a vulture, ¹² and later we shall see how, under the name of Faridun, he becomes an im portant hero in the Persian epic. His mythical nature appears clearly if one compares the storm-stories in the Veda with those in the Avesta. All essential features are the same on both sides. The myth of a conflict between a god of light or storm and a dragon assumes many shapes in Iran, although in its general outlines it is unchanging. In Thraetaona's struggle the victor was, as we have seen, connected with fire. Now fire itself, under the name of Atar, son of Ahura Mazda, is represented as having been in combat with the dragon Azhi Dahaka:

"Fire, Ahura Mazda's offspring,
Then did hasten, hasten forward,
Thus within himself communing:
Let me seize that Glory unattainable.
But behind him hurtled onward
Azhi, blasphemies outpouring,
Triple-mouthed and evil-creeded:
Back! let this be told thee,
Fire, Ahura Mazda's offspring:
If thou holdest fast that thing unattainable,
Thee will I destroy entirely,
That thou shalt no more be gleaming
On the earth Mazda-created,
For protecting Asha's creatures.
Then Atar drew back his hands,
Anxious, for his life affrighted,
So much Azhi had alarmed him.
Then did hurtle, hurtle forward,
Triple-mouthed and evil-creeded,
Azhi, thus within him thinking:
Let me seize that Glory unattainable.
But behind him hastened onward
Fire, Ahura Mazda's offspring,
Speaking thus with words of meaning:
Hence! let this be told thee,
Azhi, triple-mouthed Dahaka:
If thou holdest fast that thing unattainable,
I shall sparkle up thy buttocks,
I shall gleam upon thy jaw, ¹³
That thou shalt no more be coming
On the earth Mazda-created,
For destroying Asha's creatures.
Then Azhi drew back his hands,
Anxious, for his life affrighted,
So much Atar had alarmed him.
Forth that Glory went up-swelling
To the ocean Vourukasha.
Straightway then the Child of Waters,
Swift of horses, seized upon him.
This doth the Child of Waters, swift of horses, desire:
Let me seize that Glory unattainable
To the bottom of deep ocean,
In the bottom of profound gulfs. " ¹⁴

Although much uncertainty reigns as to the localization of the sea Vourukasha and the nature of the "Son of the Waters" (Apam Napat), the prevalent opinion is that they are respectively the waters on high and the fire above, which is born from the clouds.

The A vesta's most poetical accounts of the contest on high are, however, not the descriptions of battles with Azhi Dahaka, but the vivid pictures of the victory of Tishtrya, the dog-star (Sirius), over Apaosha, the demon of drought. ¹⁵ Drought and the heat of summer were the great scourges in Iranian countries, and Sirius, the star of the dog-days, was supposed to bring the beneficent summer showers, whereas Apaosha, the evil demon, was said to have captured the waters, which had to be released by the god of the dog-star. Accordingly we find the faithful singing:

"Tishtrya the star we worship,
Full of brilliancy and glory,
Holding water's seed and mighty,
Tall and strong, afar off seeing,
Tall, in realms supernal working,

For whom yearn flocks and herds and men
When will Tishtrya be rising,
Full of brilliancy and glory?
When, Oh, when, will springs of water
Flow again, more strong than horses? " ¹⁶

Tishtrya listens to the prayer of the faithful, and being satis fied with the sacrifice and the libations, he descends to the sea Vourukasha in the shape of a white, beautiful horse, with golden ears and caparisoned in gold. But the demon Apaosha rushes down to meet him in the form of a dark horse, bald with bald ears, bald with a bald back, bald with a bald tail, a frightful horse. They meet together, hoof against hoof; they fight together for three days and nights. Then the demon Apaosha proves stronger than the bright and glorious Tishtrya and over comes him, and he drives him back a full mile from the sea Vourukasha. In deep distress the bright and glorious Tishtrya cries out:

"Woe to me, Ahura Mazda!
Bane for you, ye plants and waters !
Doomed the faith that worships Mazda!
Now men do not worship me with worship that speaks my name.
If men should worship me with worship that speaks my name, . . .
For myself I'd then be gaining
Strength of horses ten in number,
Strength of camels ten in number,
Strength of oxen ten in number,
Strength of mountains ten in number,
Strength of navigable rivers ten in number." ¹⁷

Hearing his lament, the faithful offer a sacrifice to Tishtrya, and the bright and glorious one descends yet again to the sea Vourukasha in the guise of a white, beautiful horse, with golden ears and caparisoned in gold. Once more the demon Apaosha rushes down to meet him in the form of a dark horse, bald with bald ears. They meet together, they fight together at the time of noon. Then Tishtrya proves stronger than Apaosha and overcomes him, driving him far from the sea Vourukasha and shouting aloud-:

"Hail to me, Ahura Mazda!
Hail to you, ye plants and waters!
Hail the faith that worships Mazda!
Hail be unto you, ye countries!
Up now, O ye water-channels,
Go ye forth and stream unhindered
To the corn that hath the great grains,
To the grass that hath the small grains,
To corporeal creation." ¹⁸

Then Tishtrya goes to the sea Vourukasha and makes it boil up and down, causing it to stream up and over its shores, so that not only the shores of the sea, but its centre, are boil ing over. After this vapours rise up above Mount Ushindu that stands in the middle of the sea Vourukasha, and they push forward, forming clouds and following the south wind along the ways traversed by Haoma, the bestower of prosperity. Behind him rushes the mighty wind of Mazda, and the rain and the cloud and the hail, down to the villages, down to the fields, down to the seven regions of earth.

Not only does Tishtrya enter the contest as a horse, but he also appears as a bull, a disguise which reminds us of the Semitic myth in which the storm-god Zu fights under the shape of a bull, and which is an allusion to the violence of the storms and to the fertility which water brings to the world.

Finally Tishtrya is changed into a brilliant youth, and that is why he is invoked for wealth of male children. In this avatar he manifests himself

"With the body of a young man,
Fifteen years of age and shining,
Clear of eye, and tall, and sturdy,
Full of strength, and very skilful." ¹⁹

This rain-myth was later converted into a cosmic story, and Tishtrya's shower was supposed to have taken place in primeval times before the appearance of man on earth, in order to destroy the evil creatures produced by Angra Mainyu as a counterpart of Mazda's creation. Tishtrya's co-operators were Vohu Manah, the Amesha Spentas, and Haoma, and he produced rain during ten days and ten nights in each one of the three forms which he assumed an allusion to the dog-days that were supposed to be thirty in number. "Every single drop of that rain became as big as a bowl, and the water stood the height of a man over the whole of this earth; and the noxious creatures on the earth being all killed by the rain, went into the holes of the earth." Afterward the wind blew, and the water was all swept away and was brought out to the borders of the earth, and the sea Vourukasha ("Wide-Gulfed") arose from it. "The noxious creatures remained dead within the earth, and their venom and stench were mingled with the earth, and in order to carry that poison away from the earth Tishtar went down into the ocean in the form of a white horse with long hoofs," conquering Apaosha and causing the rivers to flow out. ²⁰

In his function of collector and distributor of waters from the sea Vourukasha, Tishtrya is aided by a strange mythical being, called the three-legged ass. "It stands amid the wide-formed ocean, and its feet are three, eyes six, mouths nine, ears two, and horn one, body white, food spiritual, and it is righteous. And two of its six eyes are in the position of eyes, two on the top of the head, and two in the position of the hump; with the sharpness of those six eyes it overcomes and destroys. Of the nine mouths three are in the head, three in the hump, and three in the inner part of the flanks; and each mouth is about the size of a cottage, and it is itself as large as Mount Alvand [eleven thousand feet above the sea]. . . . When that ass shall hold its neck in the ocean its ears will terrify, and all the water of the wide formed ocean will shake with agitation. . . . When it stales in the ocean all the sea-water will become purified." Otherwise, "all the water in the sea would have perished from the contamination which the poison of the evil spirit has brought into its water." ²¹ Darmesteter thinks this ass is another incarnation of the storm-cloud, whereas West maintains that it is some foreign god tolerated by the Mazdean priests and fitted into their system. ²²

Zoroastrianism, being inclined to abstraction and to personifying abstractions, has created a genius of victory, embodying the conquest of evil creatures and foes of every description which the myths attribute to Thraetaona, Tishtrya, and other heroes. The name of this deity is Verethraghna ("Victory over Adverse Attack"), an expression reminding us of the epithet Vrtrahan ("Slayer of Vrtra") of the mighty Vedic conqueror-god Indra. The vrtra, the "attack," is in the latter case made into the name of the assailing dragon Ahi, the Iranian Azhi.

Verethraghna penetrated into popular worship and even became the great Hercules of the Armenians, who were for centuries under the influence of Iranian culture and who called the hero Vahagn, a corruption of Verethraghna. ²³ He was supposed to have been born in the ocean, probably a reminiscence of the sea Vourukasha, and he mastered not only the dragon Azhi, whom we know, but also Vishapa, whose name in the Avesta is an epithet of Azhi, meaning "whose saliva is poisonous," and he fettered them on Mount Damavand. ²⁴ In a hymn of the Avesta ²⁵ the various incarnations of Verethraghna are enumerated. Here he describes himself as "the mightiest in might, the most victorious in victory, the most glorious in glory, the most favouring in favour, the most advantageous in advantage, the most healing in healing." ²⁶ He destroys the malice of all the malicious, of demons as well as of men, of sorcerers and spirits of seduction, and of other evil beings. He comes in the shape of a strong, beautiful wind, bearing the Glory made by Mazda that is both health and strength; ²⁷ and next he conquers in the form of a handsome bull, with yellow ears and golden horns. ²⁸

Thirdly, he is a white, beautiful horse like Tishtrya, and then a burden-bearing camel, sharp-toothed and long-haired. The fifth time he is a wild boar, and next, once more like Tishtrya, he manifests himself in the guise of a handsome youth of fifteen, shining, clear-eyed, and slender-heeled.

The seventh time he appears:

" In the shape of the Vareghna,
Grasping prey with what is lower,
Rending prey with what is upper, ²⁹
Who of bird-kind is the swiftest,
Lightest, too, of them that fare forth.
He alone of all things living
To the arrow's flight attaineth,
Though well shot it speedeth onward.
Forth he flies with ruffling feathers
When the dawn begins to glimmer,
Seeking evening meals at nightfall,
Seeking morning meals at sunrise,
Skimming o er the valleyed ridges,
Skimming o er the lofty hill-tops,
Skimming o er deep vales of rivers,
Skimming o er the forests summits,
Hearing what the birds may utter." ³⁰

Then Verethraghna comes as "a beautiful wild ram, with horns bent round," and again as "a fighting buck with sharp horns." That these are symbols of virility is shown by the next avatar, the tenth, in which he appears

"In a shining hero's body,
Fair of form, Mazda-created,
With a dagger gold-damascened,
Beautified with all adornment.

Verethraghna gives the sources of manhood, the strength of the arms, the health of the whole body, the sturdiness of the whole body, and the eyesight of the kar-ftsh, which lives beneath the waters and can measure a ripple no thicker than a hair, in the Rangha whose ends lie afar, whose depth is a thousand times the height of a man. . . . He gives the eyesight of the stallion, which in the dark and cloudy night can perceive a horse's hair lying on the ground and knows whether it is from the head or from the tail. . . . He gives the eyesight of the golden-collared vulture, which from as far as the ninth district can perceive a piece of flesh no thicker than the fist, giving just as much light as a shining needle gives, as the point of a needle gives." ³¹

Yet even this is not all, for we are also told that

"Be they men or be they demons,
Verethraghna, Ahura's creature,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Breaketh battle-hosts in pieces,
Cutteth battle-hosts asunder,
Presseth battle-hosts full sorely,
Shaketh battle-hosts with terror.

Then, when Verethraghna, Ahura's creature,
Bindeth fast the hands behind them,
Teareth out the eyeballs from them,
Maketh dull the ears with deafness
Of the close battle-hosts of the confederated countries,
Of the men false to Mithra [or, belying their pledges],
They cannot maintain their footing,
They cannot oppose resistance." ³²

The poetic inspiration of this hymn has made it interesting to quote it at some length, especially as it shows the concentration in the person of the genius of victory of many features belonging to the old myths of contests on high.

This story was apt to have many replicas. Beyond those mentioned here Persian mythology possessed several more, such as the story of Keresaspa, who smote the horny dragon or the golden-heeled Gandarewa, ³³ and whose exploits have been made the subject of an extensive narrative in the Shdhndmah, as will be set forth later on.

Iranian mythology, being essentially dualistic, contains numerous other contests, such as the overpowering of Yima, the king of the golden age, by Azhi Dahaka, the killing of the primeval bull by Mithra, the battle between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu in the first times of creation, the war waged by Zarathushtra, the prophet, against the tenets of the demons, and the same struggle at the end of the world by the future prophet Saoshyant.

All this will be considered in subsequent chapters, and all this, according to certain mythologists like James Darmesteter, is the perpetual repetition (with some modifications) of the struggle in the storm-cloud between the light and the darkness. That conclusion is obviously exaggerated, although it is very likely, and very natural also, that features borrowed from the famous myth have penetrated into those other battles which are, each of them, incidents of the great dualistic war between the two creations. It is this conflict that we are now going to follow from the time of creation to the renovation of the world at the end of this period of strife.

1. On this cycle of legends see M. Breal, "Hercule et Cacus," in his Melanges de mythologie et de linguistique, Paris, 1877, pp. i- 161, and cf. Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1916, i. 86-87, 33

2. See supra, pp. 23-24.

3. Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898, pp. 429, 432.

4- ib- P- 537-

5. ib. p. 541.

6. A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, Strassburg, 1897, p. 67.

7. For all these myths see supra, pp. 33, 35~3 6 87-88, 93, 133.

8. Yasna, ix. 7.

9. Fendiddd, xx. 24.

10. Thrita, whose name means "third," was the third man who prepared the haoma, according to Yasna, ix. 9.

11. Yasna, ix. 7.

12. Yasht, v. 61.

13. This line, frd thzuam zadanha paiti uzukhshdne zafarj paiti uzraocayeni, well illustrates the extent to which much of the Avesta in its present form has suffered interpolation. It is obvious, from the parallelism with Azhi Dahaka's speech, that the line should read simply frd thwdm paiti uzukhshdne ("thee will I besprinkle wholly" [i.e. with fire]). The same thing occurs below in the last line of the translation from Yasht, viii. 24, where the parallelism with dasandm gairindm aojo ("strength of mountains ten in number") shows that the word ndvayanam ("navigable") is interpolated in the line dasandm apdm ndvayanam aojo, which should read dasandm apam aojo ("strength of rivers ten in number").

14. Yasht, xix. 47-51. The "Child of Waters" is mentioned in magic Mandean inscriptions as "Nbat, the great primeval germ which the Life hath sent" (H. Pognon, Inscriptions mandaites des coupes de Khouabir, Paris, 1898, pp. 63, 68; cf. also p. 95).

15. G. Hiising (Die traditionelle Ueberlieferung und das arische System, p. 53) thinks that Apaosha means "Coverer," "Concealer" (from apa + var).

16. Yasht, viii. 4-5.

17. Yasht, viii. 23-24.

18. Yasht, viii. 29.

19. Yasht, viii. 13. Fifteen was the paradisiac age to the Iranian mind.

20. Bundahish, vii. 4-7 (tr. E. W. West, in SEE v. 26-27).

21. Bundahish) xix. i-io.

22. J. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 148; E. W. West, in SEE v. 67, note 4.

23. M. Ananikian, "Armenia (Zoroastrianism in)," in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, i. 799, Edinburgh, 1908.

24. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, ii. 559.

25. Yasht, xiv.

26. Cf. the healing functions of Thrita and Thraetaona, supra, p. 265, and infra, p. 318.

27. Cf. the story of Atar, supra, pp. 266-67.

28. Cf. the legend of Tishtrya, supra, p. 269.

29. Namely, seizing its prey with its talons and rending it with its beak. The bird Vareghna is apparently the raven.

30. Yasht, xiv. 19-21. The comparison of the lightning to a bird is of frequent occurrence.

31. Yasht, xiv. 27-33.

32. Yasht, xiv. 62-63.

33. Yasna, ix. II.

CHAPTER II. MYTHS OF CREATION

THE Iranian legend of creation is as follows. ¹ Ahura Mazda lives eternally in the region of infinite light, but Angra Mainyu, on the contrary, has his abode in the abyss of endless darkness, between them being empty space, the air. After Ahura Mazda had produced his creatures, which were to remain "three thousand years in a spiritual state, so that they were unthinking and unmoving, with intangible bodies," the Evil Spirit, having arisen from the abyss, came into the light of Ahura Mazda. Because of his malicious nature, he rushed in to destroy it, but seeing the Good Spirit was more powerful than himself, he fled back to the gloomy darkness, where he formed many demons and fiends to help him.

Then Ahura Mazda saw the creatures of the Evil Spirit, terrible, corrupt, and bad as they were, and having the knowledge of what the end of the matter would be, he went to meet Angra Mainyu and proposed peace to him: "Evil spirit! bring assistance unto my creatures, and offer praise! so that, in reward for it, thou and thy creatures may become immortal and undecaying." But Angra Mainyu howled thus: "I will not depart, I will not provide assistance for thy creatures, I will not offer praise among thy creatures, and I am not of the same opinion with thee as to good things. I will destroy thy creatures for ever and everlasting; moreover, I will force all thy creatures into disaffection to thee and affection for myself." Ahura Mazda, however, said to the Evil Spirit, "Appoint a period so that the intermingling of the conflict may be for nine thousand years"; for he knew that by setting that time the Evil Spirit would be undone. The latter, unobservant and ignorant, was content with the agreement, and the nine thousand years were divided so that during three thousand years the will of Mazda was to be done, then for three thousand years there is an intermingling of the wills of Mazda and Angra Mainyu, and in the last third the Evil Spirit will be disabled.

Afterward Ahura Mazda recited the powerful prayer Yathd ahu vairyd ² and, by so doing, exhibited to the Evil Spirit his own triumph in the end and the impotence of his adversary. Perceiving this, Angra Mainyu became confounded and fell back into the gloomy darkness, where he stayed in confusion for three thousand years. During this period the creatures of Mazda remained unharmed, but existed only in a spiritual or potential state; and not until this triple millennium had come to an end did the actual creation begin.

As the first step in the cosmogonic process Ahura Mazda produced Vohu Manah ("Good Mind"), whereupon Angra Mainyu immediately created Aka Manah ("Evil Mind"); and in like manner when Ahura Mazda formed the other Amesha Spentas, his adversary shaped their counterparts. After all this was completed, the creation of the world took place in due order sky, water, earth, plants, animals, mankind.

In shaping the sky and the heavenly bodies Ahura Mazda produced first the celestial sphere and the constellations, especially the zodiacal signs. The stars are a warlike army des tined for battle against the evil spirits. There are six million four hundred and eighty thousand small stars, and to the many which are unnumbered places are assigned in the four quarters of the sky. Over the stars four leaders preside, Tishtrya (Sirius) being the chieftain of the east, Haptok Ring (Ursa Major) of the north, Sataves of the west, and Vanand of the south. Then he created the moon and afterward the sun.

In the meanwhile, however, the impure female demon Jahi had undertaken to rouse Angra Mainyu from his long sleep

"Rise up, we will cause a conflict in the world," but this did not please him because, through fear of Ahura Mazda, he was not able to lift up his head. Then she shouted again, "Rise up, thou father of us! for I will cause that conflict in the world wherefrom the distress and injury of Auharmazd and the archangels will arise. ... I will make the whole creation of Auharmazd vexed."

When she had shouted thrice, Angra Mainyu was delighted and started up from his confusion, and he kissed Jahi upon the head and howled, "What is thy wish? so that I may give it thee? " And she shouted, "A man is the wish, so give it to me." Now the form of the Evil Spirit was a log like a lizard's body, but he made himself into a young man of fifteen years, ³ and this brought the thought of Jahi unto him.

Then Angra Mainyu with his confederate demons went toward the luminaries that had just been created, and he saw the sky and sprang into it like a snake, ⁴ so that the heavens were as shattered and frightened by him as a sheep by a wolf. Just like a fly he rushed out upon the whole creation and he made the world as tarnished and black at midday as though it were in dark night. He created the planets in opposition to the chieftains of the constellations, and they dashed against the celestial sphere and threw the constellations into confu sion, 5 and the entire creation was as disfigured as though fire had burned it and smoke had arisen.

For ninety days and nights the Amesha Spentas and Yazatas contended with the confederate demons and hurled them confounded back into the darkness. The rampart of the sky was now built in such a manner that the fiends would no more be able to penetrate into it; and when the Evil Spirit no longer found an entrance, he was compelled to rush back to the nether darkness, beholding the annihilation of the demons and his own impotence.

Then as the second step in the cosmogonic process Ahura Mazda created the waters. ⁶ These converge into the sea Vourukasha ("Wide-Gulfed"), which occupies one third of this earth in the direction of the southern limit of Mount Alburz and is so wide that it contains the water of a thousand lakes. Every lake is of a particular kind; some are great, and some are small, while others are so vast that a man with a horse could not compass them around in less than forty days.

All waters continually flow from the source Ardvi Sura Anahita ("the Wet, Strong, and Spotless One"). There are a hundred thousand golden channels, and the water, warm and clear, goes through them toward Mount Hugar, the lofty. On the summit of that mountain is Lake Urvis, into which the water flows, and becoming quite purified, returns through a different golden channel. At the height of a thousand men an open golden branch from that affluent is connected with Mount Ausindom and the sea Vourukasha, whence one part flows forth to the ocean for the purification of the sea, while another portion drizzles in moisture upon the whole of this earth. All the creatures of Mazda acquire health from it, and it dispels the dryness of the atmosphere.

There are, moreover, three large salt seas and twenty-three small. Of the three, the Puitika (Persian Gulf) is the greatest, and the control of it is connected with moon and wind; it comes and goes in increase and decrease because of her revolving. From the presence of the moon two winds continually blow; one is called the down-draught, and one the up-draught, and they produce flow and ebb.

The spring Ardvi Sura Anahita, which we have just men tioned, and from which all rivers flow down to the earth, is worshipped as a goddess. She is celebrated in the fifth Yasht of the Avesta as the life-increasing, the herd-increasing, the fold-increasing, who makes prosperity for all countries. She runs powerfully down to the sea Vourukasha, and all its shores are boiling over when she plunges foaming down; she, Ardvi Sura, who has a thousand gulfs and a thousand outlets.

Not only does Anahita bring fertility to the fields by her waters, but she makes the seed of all males pure and sound, purifies the wombs of all females, causes them to bring forth in safety, and puts milk in their breasts. ⁷ She gave strength to all heroes of primeval times so that they were able to overcome their foes, whether the demons, the serpent Azhi, or the golden-heeled Gandarewa.

She is personified under the appearance of a handsome and stately woman. ⁸

"Yea in truth her arms are lovely,
White of hue, more strong than horses;
Fair-adorned is she and charming;

With a lovely maiden's body,
Very strong, of goodly figure,
Girded high and standing upright,
Nobly born, of brilliant lineage;
Ankle-high she weareth foot-gear
Golden-latcheted and shining.

She is clad in costly raiment,
Richly pleated and all golden,

For adornment she hath ear-rings
With four corners and all golden.
On her lovely throat a necklace
She doth wear, the maid full noble,
Ardvi Sura Anahita.
Round her waist she draws a girdle
That fair-formed may be her bosom,
That well-pleasing be her bosom.
On her brow a crown she placeth,
Ardvi Sura Anahita,
Eight its parts, its jewels a hundred,
Fair-formed, like a chariot-body,
Golden, ribbon-decked, and lovely,
Swelling forth with curve harmonious.
She is clad in beaver garments,
Ardvi Sura Anahita,
Of the beaver tribe three hundred."

This precise description points to the existence of representations of the goddess, a thing unusual in Persia in ancient times. But Anahita, as Herodotus tells us, was at that period identified with the Semitic Ishtar, a divinity of fertility and fecundity, and a powerful deity invoked in battle and in war, both these functions being attributed to Anahita in the hymn quoted above. Ishtar seems to have absorbed in Babylonia many of the attributes of Ea's consort Nin Ella, the "Great Lady of the Waters," the "Pure Lady" of birth, whose name is the exact equivalent of Ardvi Sura Anahita; and it was Nin Ella, more probably than Ishtar, who was the prototype of the Iranian goddess.

The Evil Spirit, however, also came to the water and sent Apaosha, the demon of drought, to fight against Tishtrya (Sirius), who bestows water upon the earth during the summer; the result of their encounter being the conflict that has been narrated above.

The third of the processes of creation was the shaping of the world. After the rain of Tishtrya had flooded the earth and purified it from the venom of the noxious creatures, and when the waters had retired, the thirty-three kinds of land were formed. These are distributed into seven portions: one is in the middle, and the others are the six regions (keshvars) of the earth.

To counteract the work of Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu came and pierced the earth, entering straight into its midmost part; and when the earth shook, the mountains arose. First, Mount Alburz (Hara Berezaiti) was created, and then the other ranges of mountains came into being; "for as Alburz grew forth all the mountains remained in motion, for they have all grown forth from the root of Alburz. At that time they came up from the earth, like a tree which has grown up to the clouds and its root to the bottom." The mountains stand in a row about Alburz, which is the knot of lands and is the highest peak of all, lifting its head even to the sky. On one of its summits, named Taera, the sun, the moon, and the stars rise, and from another of its heights, Hukairya, the water of Ardvi Sura Anahita flows down, while on it the haoma, the plant of life, is set. What plant this haoma was we do not know, but its intoxicating qualities produced an exaltation which naturally caused it to be regarded as divine.

Next came the creation of the vegetable kingdom when Ameretat, the Amesha Spenta who has plants under her guardianship, pounded them small and mixed them with the water which Tishtrya had seized. Then the dog-star made that water rain down over all the earth, on which plants sprang up like hair upon the heads of men. Ten thousand of them grew forth, these being provided in order to keep away the ten thousand diseases which the evil spirit produced for the creatures. From those ten thousand have sprung the hundred thousand species of plants that are now in the world.

From these germs the "Tree of All Seeds" was given out and grew up in the middle of the sea Vourukasha, where it causes every species of plant to increase. Near to that "Tree of All Seeds" the Gaokerena ("Ox-Horn") tree was produced to avert decrepitude. This is necessary to bring about the renovation of the universe and the immortality that will follow; every one who eats it becomes immortal, and it is the chief of plants. ⁹

The Evil Spirit formed a lizard in the deep water of Vouru kasha that it might injure the Gaokerena; 10 but to keep away that lizard Ahura Mazda created ten kar-fish, which at all times continually circle around the Gaokerena, so that the head of one of them never ceases to be turned toward the lizard. Together with the lizard those fish are spiritually fed, and till the renovation of the universe they will remain in the sea and struggle with one another.

The Gaokerena tree is also called "White Haoma." It is one of the manifestations of the famous haoma-plant, which has been mentioned many times, while its terrestrial form, the yellow haoma, is the plant of the Indo-Iranian sacrifice and the one which gives strength to men and gods. It is with this thought in mind that the sacrificer invokes "Golden Haoma":

"Thee I pray for might and conquest,
Thee for health and thee for healing,
Thee for progress and for increase,
Thee for strength of all my body,
Thee for wisdom all-adorned.

Thee I pray that I may conquer,
Conquer all the haters hatred,
Be they men or be they demons,
Be they sorcerers or witches,
Rulers, bards, or priests of evil,
Treacherous things that walk on two feet,
Heretics that walk on two feet,
Wolves that go about on four feet,
Or invading hordes deceitful
With their fronts spread wide for battle." ¹¹

Above all, however, Haoma is expected to drive death afar, to give long life, ¹² and to grant children to women and hus bands to girls.

"Unto women that would bring forth
Haoma giveth brilliant children,
Haoma giveth righteous offspring.

Unto maidens long unwedded
Haoma, quickly as they ask him,
Full of insight, full of wisdom,
Granteth husbands and protectors." ¹³

The terrestrial haoma is said to grow on the summits of the mountains, especially on Alburz (Hara Berezaiti), to which divine birds brought it down from heaven. It is collected in a box, which is placed in an iron vase, and after the priest has taken five or seven pieces of the plant from the box and washed them in the cup, the stalk of haoma is pounded in a mortar and filtered through the vara, the juice being then mixed with other sacred fluids and ritual prayers being recited.

The Haoma sacrifice is supposed to date back to primeval times, its first priests being Vivanghvant, Athwya, Thrita, and Pourushaspa, the heroes of ancient ages. The offering of it is an Indo-Iranian rite, and the same legends are found in the Veda, where amrta soma ("immortal soma" [= haoma]) has been brought from heaven to a high mountain by an eagle. Swift as thought, the bird flew to the iron castle of the sky and brought the sweet stalks back. ¹⁴ It is actually an Indo-European myth closely associated with the fire-myths, for the fire of the sky (the lightning) is said to have been brought to earth either by a bird or by a daring human being (Prometheus), while exactly the same story is told of the earthly fire-drink, the honey-mead, the draught of immortality (apfipoa-ia). Curiously enough, the Babylonian epic also knows of a marvellous plant that grows on the mountains, the plant "of birth" be longing to Shamash, the sun-god. When the wife of the hero Etana is in distress because she is unable to bring into the world a child which she has conceived, Etana prays Shamash to show him the "plant of birth": "O Lord, let thy mouth command, and give me the plant of birth. Reveal to me the plant of birth, bring forth the fruit, grant me offspring "; and an eagle then helps Etana to obtain the plant. ¹⁵ The Etana-myth is also related to the story of Rustam's birth, as will be narrated in a subsequent chapter.

When Angra Mainyu, the destroyer, came to the plants, he found them with neither thorn nor bark about them; but he coated them with bark and thorns and mixed their sap with poison, so that when men eat certain plants, they die. ¹⁶ There was also a beautiful tree with a single root. Its height was several feet, and it was without branches and without bark, juicy and sweet; but when the Evil Spirit approached it, it became quite withered. ¹⁷

In Iranian mythology the creation of fire constitutes, to all intents, a subdivision of the creation of the vegetable world, the close connexion between fire and plants in Indo-Iranian conceptions being due to the fact that it was the custom of those peoples to obtain flame by taking a stick of hard wood, boring it into a plank or board of softer wood (that of a lime-tree, for instance), and turning it round and round till fire was produced by the friction. ¹⁸ For this reason the Veda declares that Fire (Agni) is born in wood, is the embryo of plants, and is distributed in plants. But fire has likewise a heavenly origin, for it is the son of the sky-god (Dyaus) and was born in the highest heavens, whence it was brought to earth, as already narrated, though it is also described as having its origin in the aerial waters. Owing to his divine births, Agni in India is often regarded as possessing a triple character and is trisadhastha ("having three stations or dwellings"), his abodes being heaven, earth, and the waters. The fire of the hearth has been held in very great veneration among all Indo-Europeans. It was adored as Hestia in Greece and as Vesta in Rome, while in India the domestic Agni is called Grhapati (" Lord of the House"). It is also the guest (atithi) in human abodes, for it is an immortal who has taken up his home among mortals; it is Vispati ("Lord of the Settlers"), their leader, their protector. It is the friend, the brother, the nearest kinsman of man; ¹⁹ it is the great averter of evil beings, just as it keeps off wild ani mals in the forest at night.

The second aspect under which fire is subservient to human ity is the part that it plays as the messenger who brings to the gods the offerings of men. It is the sacrificial fire, and as such it is called Narasamsa ("Praise of Men") in India. ²⁰

As is well known, fire enjoys quite a special veneration in Iran, and under its first guise, as a representative of divine essence on earth, it dwells in the home of each of the faithful. Particular reverence is given to the sacred flame which is main tained with wood and perfumes in the so-called fire temples, two kinds of which are distinguished: the great temple for the Bahram fire and the small shrine, or ddardn. The Bahrain fire, whose preparation lasts an entire year, is constituted out of sixteen different kinds of fire and concentrates in itself the essence and the soul of all fires. 21 It is maintained by means of six logs of sandal-wood and is placed in the sacred room, vaulted like a dome, on a vase. Five times a day a mobed, or priest, enters the room. The lower part of his face is covered with a veil (A vesta paitiddna), preventing his breath from polluting the sacred fire, and his hands are gloved. He lays down a log of sandal-wood and recites three times the words dushmata, duzhukhta, duzhvarshta to repel "evil thoughts, evil words, evil deeds."

As in India, so in Iran several kinds of fire are distinguished: Berezisavanh ("Very Useful") is the general name of the Bahrain fire, the sacred one which shoots up before Ahura Mazda and is kept in the fire temples; Vohu Fryana ("Good Friend") is the fire which burns in the bodies of men and animals, keeping them warm; Urvazishta ("Most Delightful") burns in the plants and can produce flames by friction; Vazishta ("Best-Carrying") is the aerial fire, the lightning that purifies the sky and slays the demon Spenjaghrya; Spenishta ("Most Holy") burns in paradise in the presence of Ahura Mazda.

Of these five fires, one drinks and eats, that which is in the bodies of men; one drinks and does not eat, that which is in plants, which live and grow through water; two eat and do not drink, these being the fire which is ordinarily used in the world, and likewise the fire of Bahram (= Berezisavanh); one consumes neither water nor food, and this is the fire Vaishta. ²²

This classification enjoyed a very great success among the Talmudists, who took it from the Mazdeans in the second century A.D. 23 Besides these five fires, the Avesta knows of Nairyosangha, who is of royal lineage and whose name reminds us of nardsamsa, the epithet of Agni ("the Fire") in India. Like Narasamsa Agni, Nairyosangha is the messenger between men and gods and he dwells with kings, inasmuch as they are endowed with a divine majesty. The emanation of divine es sence in kings, however, is more often called khvarenanh (Old Persian farnah), which is a glory that attaches itself to monarchs as long as they are worthy representatives of divine power, as will be seen later in the story of Yima.

The fire was all light and brilliancy, but Angra Mainyu came up to it, as to all beings of the good creation, and marred it with darkness and smoke. ²³

The fifth creation was the animal realm. Just as there was a tree Gaokerena which had within itself all seeds of plants and trees, so Iranian mythology knows of a primeval ox in which were contained the germs of the animal species and even of a certain number of useful plants.

This ox, the sole-created animate being, was a splendid, strong animal which, though sometimes said to be a female, ²⁵ is usually described as a bull. When the Evil Spirit came to the ox, Ahura Mazda ground up a healing fruit, called bindk, so that the noxious effects of Angra Mainyu might be minimized; but when, despite this, "it became at the same time lean and ill, as its breath went forth and it passed away, the ox also spoke thus: The cattle are to be created, their work, labour, and care are to be appointed. When Geush Urvan ("the Soul of the Ox") came forth from the body, it stood up and cried thus to Ahura Mazda, as loudly as a thousand men when they raise a cry at one time: "With whom is the guardianship of the creatures left by thee, now that ruin has broken into the earth, and vegetation is withered, and water is troubled? Where is the man of whom it was said by thee thus:

I will produce him, so that he may preach carefulness? Ahuja Mazda answered : "You are made ill, O Goshurvan! you have the illness which the evil spirit brought on; if it were proper to produce that man in this earth at this time, the evil spirit would not have been oppressive in it." Geush Urvan was not satisfied, however, but walked to the vault of the stars and cried in the same way, and his voice came to the moon and to the sun till the Fravashi ²⁶ of Zoroaster was exhibited to it, and Ahura Mazda promised to send the prophet who would preach carefulness for the animals, whereupon the soul of the ox was contented and agreed to nourish the creatures and to protect the animal world.

From every limb of the ox fifty-five species of grain and twelve kinds of medicinal plants grew forth, their splendour and strength coming from the seminal energy of the ox. Delivered to the moon, that seed was thoroughly purified by the light of the moon and fully prepared in every way, and then two oxen arose, one male and one female, after which two hundred and eighty-two pairs of every single species of animal appeared upon the earth. The quadrupeds were to live on the earth, the birds had their dwelling in the air, and the fish were in the midst of the water.

Another myth ascribes the killing of the primeval ox to the god Mithra.

The legend concerning the birth and the first exploits of Mithra runs thus. ²⁷ He was born of a rock on the banks of a river under the shade of a sacred fig-tree, coming forth armed with a knife and carrying a torch that had illumined the sombre depths. When he had clothed himself with the leaves of the fig-tree, detaching the fruit and stripping the tree of its leaves by means of his knife, he undertook to subjugate the beings already created in the world. First he measured his strength with the sun, with whom he concluded a treaty of friendship an act quite in agreement with his nature as a god of contracts and since then the two allies have supported each other in every event.

Then he attacked the primeval ox. The redoubtable animal was grazing in a pasture on a mountain, but Mithra boldly seized it by the horns and succeeded in mounting it. The ox, infuriated, broke into a gallop, seeking to free itself from its rider, who relaxed his hold and suffered himself to be dragged along till the animal, exhausted by its efforts, was forced to surrender. The god then dragged it into a cave, but the ox succeeded in escaping and roamed again over the mountain pastures, whereupon the sun sent his messenger, the raven, to help his ally slay the beast. Mithra resumed his pursuit of the ox and succeeded in overtaking it just at the moment when it was seeking refuge in the cavern which it had quitted. He seized it by the nostrils with one hand and with the other he plunged his hunting-knife deep into its flank. Then the prodigy related above took place. From the limbs and the blood of the ox sprang all useful herbs and all species of animals, and "the Soul of the Ox" (Geush Urvan) went to heaven to be the guardian of animals.

The myths relating to the primeval ox contain traces of several older Indo-European myths. First, the conception of the production of various beings out of the body of a prime val gigantic creature is a cosmogonic story, fairly common in the mythology of many nations and reproduced in the Eddie myth of the giant Ymir, who was born from the icy chaos and from whose arm sprang both a man and a woman. He was then slain by Odhin and his companions, and of the flesh of Ymir was formed the earth, of his blood the sea and the waters, of his bones the mountains, of his teeth the rocks and stones, and of his hair all manner of plants. ²⁸

Many features recall to us, on the other hand, the contests on high between a light-god and some monster who detains the rain which is the source of life for terrestrial beings and which is often personified under the shape of a cow. The kine are concealed in caves or on mountains, or the monster is hidden in a mountain cavern and escapes, as is the case with Verethraghna and Azhi in the Armenian myth. In the birth of Mithra traces of solar myths may also be detected. The raven is the messenger of the sun because, like the bird Vareghna,

" Forth he flies with ruffling feathers
When the dawn begins to glimmer." ²⁹

Here, then, we are dealing with a secondary myth.

As regards the various species of animals produced from the ox, the Mazdean books speak first of mythical beings, such as the three-legged ass that has been described above, the lizard created by Angra Mainyu to destroy the tree Gaokerena, and the kar-ftshes that defend it. They know, moreover, of an ox-fish that exists in all seas; when it utters a cry, all fishes become pregnant, and all noxious water creatures cast their young. There is also an ox, called Hadhayosh or Sarsaok in Pahlavi, on whose back men in primeval times passed from region to region across the sea Vourukasha. Many mythical birds are known in the Mazdean mythology. We have already seen the raven as an incarnation of Verethraghna ("Victory") and as a messenger of the sun to Mithra. The most celebrated bird, however, is Saena, the Simurgh of the Persians, whose open wings are like a wide cloud and full of water crowning the mountains. 30 He rests on the tree of the eagle, the Gaokerena, in the midst of the sea Vourukasha, the tree with good remedies, in which are the seeds of all plants. When he rises aloft, so violently is the tree shaken that a thousand twigs shoot forth from it; when he alights, he breaks off a thousand twigs, whose seeds are shed in all directions.

Near this powerful bird sits Camrosh, who would be king of birds, were it not for Saena. His work is to collect the seed which is shed from the tree and to convey it to the place where Tishtrya seizes the water, so that the latter may take the water containing the seed of all kinds and may rain it on the world. ³¹ When the Turanians invade the Iranian districts for booty and effect devastation, Camrosh, sent by the spirit Bcrejya, flies from the loftiest of the lofty mountains and picks up all the non-Iranians as a bird does corn. ³²

The bird Varegan, Varengan, or Vareghna (sometimes translated "raven") is the swiftest of all and is as quick as an arrow. We have already seen ³³ that he is one of Verethraghna's incarnations, and under his shape the kingly Glory (Khvarenanh) of Yima left the guilty hero and flew up to heaven. ³⁴ He is essentially a magic bird with mysterious power. Thus Zoroaster is represented as asking Ahura Mazda what would be the remedy "should I be cursed in word or thought." Ahura Mazda an swers: "Thou shouldst take a feather of the wide-feathered bird Varengan, O Spitama Zarathushtra. With that feather thou shouldst stroke thy body, with that feather thou shouldst conjure thy foe. Either the bones of the sturdy bird or the feathers of the sturdy bird carry boons.

Neither can a man of brilliance
Slay or rout him in confusion.
It first doth bring him reverence,
it first doth bring him glory.
Help to him the feather giveth
Of the bird of birds, Varengan." ³⁵

The same thing is recorded of Saena (the Simurgh) in the Shdhndmah. When Zal leaves the nest of the Simurgh, who has brought him up, his foster-father gives him one of his feathers so that he may always remain under the shadow of his power.

"Bear this plume of mine
About with thee and so abide beneath
The shadow of my Grace. Henceforth if men
Shall hurt or, right or wrong, exclaim against thee,
Then burn the feather and behold my might." ³⁶

When the side of Rudabah, Rustam's mother, is opened to allow the child to be brought into the world, Zal heals the wound by rubbing it with a feather of the Simurgh, and when Rustam is wounded to death by Isfandyar, he is cured in the same way. ³⁷

The bird Karshiptar has a more intellectual part to play, for he spread Mazda's religion in the enclosure in which the prime val king Yima had assembled mankind, ³⁸ as will be narrated below. There men recited the Avesta in the language of birds. ³⁹

The bird Asho-zushta also has the Avesta on his tongue, and when he recites the words the demons are frightened. ⁴⁰ When the nails of a Zoroastrian are cut, the faithful must say: "O Asho-zushta bird! these nails I present to thee and consecrate to thee. May they be for thee so many spears and knives, so many bows and eagle-winged arrows, so many sling-stones against the Mazainyan demons." ⁴¹ If one recites this formula, the fiends tremble and do not take up the nails, but if the parings have had no spell uttered over them, the demons and wizards use them as arrows against the bird Asho-zushta and kill him. Therefore, when the nails have had a charm spoken over them, the bird takes them and eats them, that the fiends may do no harm by their means. ⁴² Asho-zushta is probably the theological name of the owl. ⁴³

The part played by birds as transmitters of revelation leads in later literature to the identification of the Simurgh with Supreme Wisdom. ⁴⁴ As we have said more than once, the con ception of mythical birds dates back to Indo-Iranian even Indo-European times, and often those birds are incarnations of the thunderbolt, the sun, the fire, the cloud, etc. In the Rgveda the process is seen in operation. The soma is often compared with or called a bird; the fire (agni) is described as a bird or as an eagle in the sky; and the sun is at times a bird, whence it is called garutmant ("winged"). The most promi nent bird in the Veda, however, is the eagle, which carries the soma to Indra and which appears to represent lightning. ⁴⁵ So in Eddie mythology the god Odhin, transforming himself into an eagle, flies with the mead to the realm of the gods. Besides these mythical birds there are one hundred and ten species of winged kind, such as the eagle, the vulture, the crow, and the crane, to say nothing of the bat, which has milk in its teat and suckles its young, and is created of three races, bird, dog, and musk-rat, for it flies like a bird, has many teeth like a dog, and dwells in holes like a musk-rat.

Other beasts and birds were formed in opposition to noxious creatures: the white falcon kills the serpent with its wings; the magpie destroys the locust; the vulture, dwelling in decay, is created to devour dead matter, as do the crow the most precious of birds and the mountain kite. ⁴⁶ So it is also with the quadrupeds, for the mountain ox, the mountain goat, the deer, the wild ass, and other beasts devour snakes. Dogs are created in opposition to wolves and to secure the protection of sheep; the fox is the foe of the demon Khava; the ichneumon destroys the venomous snake and other noxious creatures in burrows; and the great musk-animal was formed to counter act ravenous intestinal worms. The hedgehog eats the ant which carries off grain; when the grain-carrying ant travels over the earth, it produces a hollow path; but when the hedgehog passes over it, the track becomes level. The beaver is in opposition to the demon which is in the water.

The cock, in co-operation with the dog, averts demons and wizards at night and helps Sraosha in that task, and the shepherd s dog and the watch-dog of the house are also indispensable creatures and destroyers of fiends. The dog likewise annihilates covetousness and disobedience, and when it barks it destroys pain, while its flesh and fat are remedies for averting decay and anguish from man. Ahura Mazda created nothing useless whatever; all these animals have been formed for the well-being of mankind and in order that the fiends may continually be destroyed. ⁴⁷

NOTES

1. Adapted from E. W. West's translation of Bundahish, i-iii, and Selections of Zdt-Sparam, i-ii, in SBE v. 1-19, 156-63.

2. "As the best lord"; the opening words of Yasna, xxvii. 13, and a formula frequently used in prayers. Cf. L. H. Mills, in JRAS, 1910, pp. 57-68, 641-57.

3. A reminiscence of the myths of Tishtrya and Verethraghna; cf. supra, pp. 269, 272.

4. A reminiscence of the storm-myths of Azhi, etc. ; cf . supra, pp. 266-67.

5. The planets are evil beings since they do not follow the regular course of the stars.

6. Bundahish, xiii.

7. Yasht, v. 1-4.

8. Yasht, v. 7, 64, 126-129.

9. Bundahish, ix; Selections of Zdt-Sparam, viii.

10. Bundahish, xviii.

11. Yasna, ix. 17-18.

12. Yasna, ix. 19-20.

13. Yasna, ix. 22-23. It is scarcely necessary to note that the word "Haoma" is dissyllabic.

14. A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, Strassburg, 1897, p. in.

15. M. Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898, pp. 520-21.

16. Bundahish, xxvii. I.

17. Selections of Zdt-Sparam, ii. 5.

1 8. O. Schrader, "Aryan Religion," in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ii. 39, Edinburgh, 1910.

19. A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, Strassburg, 1897, p. 88 ff.

20. See supra, pp. 44-45.

21. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, i. pp. lix ff.

22. Bundahish, xvii. 1-4.

23. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, i. 150.

24. Bundahish, iii. 24; Selections of Zdt-Sparam, ii. ii.

25. Selections of Zdt-Sparam, ii. 6.

26. Namely, his spiritual prototype, his supra-terrestrial self or guardian spirit. For this account of Geush Urvan see Bundahish, iii. 17-18, iv. 1-5.

27. F. Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, Chicago, 1903, p. 131 ff.

28. See P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons, Boston, 1902, p. 341.

29. Yasht, xiv. 19.

30. Yasht, xiv. 41.

31. Maindg-i-Khrat, Ixii. 40-42 (tr. E. W. West, in SBE xxiv. 112).

32. Bundahish, xix. 13.

33. Supra, p. 272.

34. Yasht, xix. 35.

35. Yasht, xiv. 34-36.

36. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, ii. 571, note 51; Shdhndmah, tr. A. G. and E. Warner, i. 246.

37. Shdhndmah, i. 320-22.

38. Vendiddd, ii. 42.

39. Bundahish, xix. 16.

40. J. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 189.

41. Vendiddd, xvii. 9.

42. Bundahish, xix. 19.

43. C. Bartholomae, Altiranisches Worterbuch, col. 259.

44. J. Darmesteter, in SBE xxiii. 203, note 4.

45. A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, Strassburg, 1897, p. 152; see also supra, pp. 47, 62.

46. Bundahish, xix. 21-25.

47. Bundahish, xix. 36.

CHAPTER III. THE PRIMEVAL HEROES

THE culmination of Iranian cosmogony was the creation of the human race. For the Mazdeans the first man was Gaya Maretan ("Human Life"),

"Who first of Ahura Mazda
Heard the mind and heard the teachings,
From whom, too, Ahura Mazda
Formed the Aryan countries household
And the seed of Aryan countries." ¹

He was the first man, as Saoshyant will be the last, ² and his bones will rise up first of all at the resurrection. ³ His spirit lived three thousand years with the spirit of the ox during the period when creation was merely spiritual, and then Ahura Mazda formed him corporeally. He was produced brilliant and white, radiant and tall, under the form of a youth of fifteen years, and this from the sweat of Ahura Mazda. ⁴ In the meantime, however, the demons had done their work, and when Gaya Maretan issued from the sweat he saw the world dark as night and the earth as though not a needle's point remained free from noxious creatures; the celestial sphere was revolving, and the sun and moon remained in motion, and the creatures of evil were fighting with the stars. The Evil Spirit sent a thou sand demons to Gaya Maretan, but the appointed day had not yet come, for Gaya was to live thirty years and was able to repel the fiends and to kill the dreadful demon Arezura. ⁵ When at length the time had come for his immolation, Jahi induced Angra Mainyu to pour poison on the body of Gaya, whom he further burdened with need, suffering, hunger, disease, and the plagues of the wicked Bushyasta (the demon of sloth), of Asto-Vidhotu, and of other destroying beings. Gaya died, and his body became molten brass, ⁶ while other minerals arose from his members: gold, silver, iron, tin, lead, quick silver, and adamant. Gold was Gaya's seed, which was entrusted to the earth and carefully preserved by Spenta Armaiti, the guardian of earth. After forty years it brought forth the first human pair, Mashya and Mashyoi, under the appearance of a rivas-plant (Rheum ribes) with one stem and fifteen leaves, because the human couple were intimately united and were born at the age of fifteen years. ⁷

The parallelism between this myth accounting for the production of human beings and the ox-story explaining how animals were created is very striking and is intentional, and in the Avesta the primeval man and the primeval ox are invoked together. ⁸ The same parallelism, curiously enough, exists in the cosmogony of the Scandinavians, in which it is reported that the cow Audhubla was produced at the same time as the giant Ymir. ⁹ The primeval giant is an Indo-European con ception. We find it also in India in a form more similar to the Iranian version, for in primordial times Purusa ("Male") was alone in the world, but differentiated himself into two beings, husband and wife.

Besides this myth, the Indians knew of another explanation for the origin of the human race. The first man is Manu, son of Vivasvant, or Yama, son of Vivasvant. Yama and his sister Yami were twins, and after the latter had overcome the scruples of the former, they produced mankind, ¹⁰ a similar story being told of Mashya and Mashyoi in Iran, as will be set forth later on. Moreover, Yama and Yami exist in Persia under the names of Yima and Yimaka (Pahlavi Yim and Yimak), though they have been changed into a king and a queen of legendary but no longer primeval times. In Iran Yima is the son of Vivanghvant, the same being as the Indian Vivasvant, and both are mythical priests who offered the Soma sacrifice. They are heavenly beings in connexion with the Asvins (the evening and the morning star) and have been taken by several scholars for the bright morning sky or the rising sun. Although this is uncertain, the latter myth seems to ascribe to man a heavenly origin, so that Darmesteter wonders whether the youth of fifteen who is the first man is not identical with the hero who in the contest on high slays the demon Azhi or other storm-dragons. The question is, of course, hardly answerable in our present state of knowledge, but it seems at least probable that a certain contamination between the storm-myth and the story of the first man has taken place. We may observe that the first man is said to be white and brilliant, that he slays a demon before being over come by the powers of darkness, and that he is born from sweat, etc.

A Manichean narrative of the creation and life of the primeval man ¹¹ is still more like a storm-myth: "The first man was created by the Lord of Paradise to fight against darkness. He had five divine weapons: warm breeze, strong wind, light, water, and fire. He dressed himself with the warm breeze, put light above it, and then water, wrapped himself in the frightfulness of winds, took fire as a spear, and rushed forward to the battle. The demon was assisted by smoke, flame, burn ing fire, darkness, and clouds. He went to meet the first man, and after fighting for twenty years he proved victorious, stripped his adversary of his light, and wrapped him in his elements."

As to Mashya and Mashyoi, who grew up under the form of a tree, they give an illustration of another myth of man's origin, the equivalents of which are found in many national traditions. In Greece the Korybantes were born as trees, and other legends speak of the birth of Attis from an almond-tree and of Adonis from a myrtle, while Vergil mentions a similar story of Italic origin. ¹²

Coming back to the Iranian myth, we must narrate the deeds of Mashya and Mashyoi. In their rivds-plant they were united in such a manner that their arms rested behind on their shoulders, while the waists of both of them were brought close and so connected that it was impossible to distinguish what belonged to one and what to the other, although after a time they changed from the shape of a plant into that of human beings and received a soul. Meanwhile the tree had grown up and brought forth fruit that were the ten varieties of man. Now Ahura Mazda spoke to Mashya and Mashyoi thus: "You are man, you are the ancestry of the world, and you are created perfect in devotion by me; perform devotedly the duty of the law, think good thoughts, speak good words, do good deeds, and worship no demons!" Then they thought that since they were human beings, both of them, they must please one another and they went together into the world. ¹³ The first words that they exchanged were that Mazda had created water and earth, plants and animals, stars, moon, and sun, and all the good things which manifest His bounty and His justice.

Then, however, letting the Spirit of Deceit penetrate into their intellects, they said that it was Angra Mainyu who had formed water, earth, etc.; and this lie gave much enjoyment to the Druj ("Deceit, Lie") because they had become wicked, and they are his prey until the renovation of the world.

For thirty days they had gone without food, covered with clothing of herbage. After thirty days they went forth into the wilderness, and coming to a white-haired goat, they milked the milk from the udder with their mouths. Then Mashya said, "I was happy before I had drunk that milk, but my pleasure is much greater now that I have enjoyed its savour." This, however, was an impious word, ¹⁴ and as a punishment they were deprived of the taste of the food, "so that out of a hun dred parts one part remained."

Thirty days later they came to a sheep, fat and white-jawed, which they slaughtered. Extracting fire from the wood of a lote-plum (a kind of jujube) and a box-tree, they stimulated the flame with their breath and took as fuel dry grass, lotus, date-palm leaves, and myrtle. Making a roast of the sheep, they dropped three handfuls of the meat into the fire, saying, "This is the share of the fire"; and one piece of the remainder they tossed to the sky, saying, "This is the share of the Yazatas," whereupon a vulture advanced and carried some of it away as a dog eats the first meat.

At first Mashya and Mashyoi had covered themselves with skins, but afterward they made garments from a cloth woven in the wilderness. They also dug a pit in the earth and found iron, which they beat out with a stone. Thus, though they had no forge, they were able to make an edged tool, with which they cut wood and prepared a shelter from the sun.

All those violations of the respect which they had to enter tain for the creatures of Ahura Mazda made them more completely the prey of the impure demons so that they began to quarrel with each other, gave each other blows, and tore one another's hair and cheeks. Then the fiends shouted to them from the darkness, "You men, worship Angra Mainyu, so that he may give you some respite!" Thereupon Mashya went forth, milked a cow, and poured the milk toward the northern part of the sky, for the powers of evil dwell in the north; and this made them the slaves of the demon to such an extent that during fifty winters they were so ill that they had no mind to have any intercourse with one another. After this, however, desire arose in Mashya and then in Mashyoi, and they satisfied their impulses and reflected that they had neglected their duty for fifty years. Thus after nine months a pair of children were born to them, but such was their tender ness for their infants that the mother devoured one and the father one; wherefore Ahura Mazda, seeing this, took tender ness for offspring from them. ¹⁵ They then had seven other pairs, male and female, from every one of whom children were born in fifty years, while the parents themselves died at the age of a hundred. ¹⁶ The story of the first human pair seems to have been influenced by theological conceptions and probably also by the traditions of Semitic people, perhaps even by the Jews, since we have only a late redaction of the myth.

Of these seven pairs one was Siyakmak and Nashak, who had as children another pair, Fravak and Fravakain. From them fifteen pairs were born who produced the seven races of men, and since then there has been a constant continuance of the generations in the world. Nine races, owing to the in crease of population, proceeded on the back of the ox Sarsaok through the sea Vourukasha and settled in the regions on the other side of the water, while six races remained in Khvaniras, among them being the pair Tazh and Tazhak who went to the plain of Arabia, whence the Persians call the Arabs Tazis. The Iranians are the descendants of Haoshyangha (Pahlavi Hoshang) and of Guzhak.

Besides the fifteen races issued from the lineage of Fravak, son of Slyakmak, there are ten varieties of mythical men, grown on the tree from which Mashya and Mashyoi were detached, these being "such as those of the earth, of the water, the breast-eared, the breast-eyed, the one-legged, those also who have wings like a bat, those of the forest, with tails, and who have hair on the body."

In the Persian epic Gaya Maretan has become the first king of the Iranians, and Siyamak is his son, but some old features are preserved in the very much adulterated legend. Thus Gayomart (= Gaya Maretan) is said to have dwelt at first on a mountain whence his throne and fortune arose, a detail which may date back to the period when, according to Darmesteter's supposition, the first man was said to have been born in the mountains of the clouds. His subjects wore leopards skins, just as Mashya and Mashyoi were first clad in the fells of animals. Gayomart reigned thirty years over the world, while Gaya Maretan was supposed to have lived on earth the same length of time; and just as Gaya Maretan was "white and brilliant," Gayomart was "on his throne like a sun or a full moon over a lofty cypress" another feature which supports Darmesteter's hypothesis.

The account of the struggle between Angra Mainyu and the first man is reduced in Firdausi's narrative to a war between Siyamak, son of Gayomart, and the wicked king Ahriman ( = Angra Mainyu), in which the superb youth was killed.

" When Gaiumart heard this the world turned black
To him, he left his throne, he wailed aloud
And tore his face and body with his nails;
His cheeks were smirched with blood, his heart was broken,
And life grew sombre." ¹⁷

The victory of darkness has thus become the overcoming of Gay5mart by a moral gloom. Siyamak, however, had left a son Hoshang who in the older legend is his grandson and he attacked the devilish foe, cut off his monstrous head, and trampled him in scorn.

In the traditions of the Iranians the story of Gaya Maretan is immediately followed by that of Hoshang, who is the old Iranian hero Haoshyangha, mentioned several times in the Avesta and referred to in the Bundahish as the son of Fravak, son of Siyakmak. The name of this mythical ruler seems to mean "King of Good Settlements," ¹⁸ and he often receives the epithet paradhdta (Pahlavi peskdaf), or "first law-giver." He is the Numa of the Iranians, the first organizer of the Ira nian nation, and is, moreover, supposed to have introduced the use of fire and metals.

The old tradition concerning him simply says that he was a man who was brave (takhma) and lived according to justice (ashavan). Thanks to the sacrifice which he offered on the top of Hara Berezaiti, the great iron mountain celebrated in all Iranian myths, he obtained divine protection; he invoked Ardvi Sura Anahita, the goddess who, as already stated, lets her beneficent waters flow down from this height; and he also addressed a prayer to Vayu, the god of wind. "He sacrificed a hundred stallions, a thousand oxen, and ten thousand lambs" ¹⁹ while seated "on a golden throne, on a golden cushion, on a golden carpet, with baresman ²⁰ outspread, with hands overflowing," ²¹ and he obtained the favour that the awful kingly Glory, the Khvarenanh, clave to him

" For a time of long duration,
So that he ruled over the earth sevenfold,
Over men and over demons,
Over sorcerers and witches,
Rulers, bards, and priests of evil,
Who slew two-thirds
Of the demon hordes Mazainyan

And the lying fiends of Varena."²²

Making them bow in fear, they fled down to darkness, ²³ and on account of his exploits his Fravashi ("Genius") is invoked to withstand the evil done by the daevas. ²⁴

The Persian writings have nothing but praise to tell of Hoshang, who was a just and upright sovereign, civilizing the world and filling the surface of the earth with justice, so that during his reign men reposed "in the gardens of content and quiet, in the bowers of undisturbed security; Prosperity drew the bloom of happiness from the vicinity of his imperial pavilion; and Victory borrowed brilliancy of complexion from the violet surface of his well-tempered sword." ²⁵

Whereas early tradition said that he had offered a sacrifice on the top of an iron mountain, Firdausi tells us that he won the iron from the rock by craft and was the first to deal with minerals, besides inventing blacksmithing and making axes, saws, and mattocks. His civilizing activity extended even further, for he taught the human race how to dig canals to irrigate a dry country, so that men turned to sowing, reaping, and planting. Moreover he trained greyhounds for the chase and showed how to make garments from the skins of sables or foxes, instead of taking leaves for that purpose. Like all heroes, he was a smiter of daevas tradition had already attributed to him the slaying of two-thirds of the demons and, as usual, that kind of exploit took place on a mountain.

"One day he reached a mountain with his men
And saw afar a long swift dusky form
With eyes like pools of blood and jaws whose smoke
Bedimmed the world. Hushang the wary seized
A stone, advanced and hurled it royally.
The world-consuming worm escaped, the stone Struck on a larger, and they both were shivered.
Sparks issued and the centres flashed. The fire
Came from its stony hiding-place again
When iron knocked. The worldlord offered praise
For such a radiant gift. He made of fire
A cynosure. This lustre is divine,
He said, and thou if wise must worship it. " ²⁶

In this story it is not difficult to recognize a storm-myth thinly disguised: a hero on a mountain ( = cloud) smites a large dragon bedimming the earth; he sends a stone (= thunderbolt); he causes fire (= lightning) to appear and illuminate the world; and, finally, he takes fire from its hiding-place and gives it to men. The mythical nature of the legend is the more evident in that it is an explanation to account for the feast of Sadah because

"That night he made a mighty blaze, he stood
Around it with his men and held the feast
Called Sada."

Hoshang is also said to have been the first to domesticate oxen, asses, and sheep, and to train dogs for guarding the flocks.

" Pair them, he said, use them for toil, enjoy
Their produce, and provide therewith your taxes. "²⁷

On the other hand, he issued orders for the destruction of beasts of prey. After forty years he left the throne to his heir Tahmurath, the Takhma Urupi of the Avesta, whom he had brought up in the principles of justice and righteousness.

The Avestic tradition gives Takhma Urupi as the successor of Haoshyangha, but does not make him a son of the latter, as Firdausi does; in the early texts he is held to be a son of Vivanghvant and a brother of Yima, and is almost a doublet of Haoshyangha. He also has made a sacrifice to Vayu ("Wind ") and has been empowered to conquer all daevas and men, all sorcerers and witches, etc., although he has not been able to secure a permanent mastery over them, as his predecessor did. After having reigned thirty years and subdued Angra Mainyu so as to ride him, turned into a horse, all around the earth from one end to the other, he was betrayed by his wife, who revealed to the Evil Spirit the secret of her husband's power. The demon, we are told, could attempt nothing against him so long as he betrayed no alarm, and accordingly Angra Mainyu instigated the wife of his conqueror to ask Takhma Urupi if he never was afraid to mount his swift black horse. Thereupon Tahmurath confessed that he had no fear either on the summits or in the valleys, but that on Hara Berezaiti he was deeply alarmed when the horse rushed with lowered head, so that he used to raise his heavy noose, shouting aloud and giving the beast a blow on the head to make it pass hastily the dangerous spot. Having been promised incomparable presents by Angra, the woman revealed this secret to him, and when the horse was on the fatal mountain the following day, he opened his huge mouth and swallowed his rider.

Fortunately Yima managed to recover his brotherss corpse from the body of Angra Mainyu, thereby rescuing the arts and civilization which had disappeared along with Takhma Urupi. ²⁸ During that operation he had his hands defiled, but he was able to cleanse them by an infusion of the all-purifying gomez ("bullss urine"). ²⁹ This story also is scarcely unlike a storm-myth, and Darmesteter ³⁰ compares it with the Scandinavian legend in which Odhin is swallowed by the wolf Fenrir, the demoniacal cloud-wolf "whose eyes and nostrils vomit fire, whose immense mouth reaches the sky with one jaw and the earth with the other." It should be noted that the scene of all those contests is Mount Hara Berezaiti.

Another story connected with Takhma Urupi is reported in the Bunddhish. ³¹ "In the reign of Takhmorup, when men continually passed, on the back of the ox Sarsaok [a curious parallel with the king's horse], from Khvamras to the other regions, one night amid the sea the wind rushed upon the fireplace the fireplace in which the fire was, such as was provided in three places on the back of the ox which the wind dropped with the fire into the sea; and all those three fires, like three breathing souls, continually shot up in the place and position of the fire on the back of the ox, so that it becomes quite light, and the men pass again through the sea." The meaning of this myth is not altogether clear, although Darmesteter thinks that the ox is another incarnation of the cloud. ³²

In later narratives Takhma Urupi is represented as having a reign similar to that of his predecessor. He also teaches men how .to clothe themselves, but instead of skins he gives them garments made by spinning the wool of sheep. As a rider of the devilish horse he was predestined to be the tamer of swift quadrupeds and to make them feed on barley, grass, and hay; moreover he taught the jackal to obey him and began to tame the hawk and the falcon.

Firdausi tells us further that when Tahmurath had conquered the daevas, binding most of them by charms and quelling the others with his massive mace, the captives, fettered and stricken, begged for their lives.

" Destroy us not, they said, and we will teach thee
A new and useful art. He gave them quarter
To learn their secret. When they were released
They had to serve him, lit his mind with knowledge
And taught him how to write some thirty scripts." ³³

This is evidently a later addition to the legend which makes Takhma Urupi fetter the daevas, and the exploits of Tahmurath have been further amplified by the historians of the Arab period, particularly as they have identified him with the Biblical Nimrod.

NOTES

1. Yasht, xiii. 87.

2. Yasna, xxvi. 10.

3. Bundahish, xxx. 7.

4. Bundahish, xxiv. i.

5. Mainog-i-Khrat, xxvii. 14.

6. Maindg-i-Khrat, xxvii. 18; J. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman,- 159

7. F. Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, p. 216.

8. Yasht, xiii. 86; Yasna, Ixviii. 22; Vis par ad^ xxi. 2.

9. J. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 159. 10. See supra, p. 68.

n. J. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 159, note 4.

12. F. Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, p. 215.

13. The Pahlavi text is very uncertain in this place.

14. The nature of this sin is not clear. It seems, however, that they were required to respect all the creatures of Ahura Mazda.

15. This whole passage is very uncertain.

16. Bundahish, xv. 1-24.

17. Shdhndmah, i. 120.

18. F. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch, p. 126.

19. Yasht, v. 21.

20. The bundle of twigs which the Iranian priest holds in his hand during the sacrifice.

21. Yasht, xv. 7.

22. Yasht, xix. 26. The metre shows that the last word of the second line, haptaithydm ("sevenfold"), should be omitted, so that it should read yat khshayata paiti bumim ("so that o er the earth he governed"). Mazana is probably the modern Mazandaran, and Varena seems to have corresponded to Gilan (see L. H. Gray, "Mazan daran," in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, viii. 507, Edinburgh, 1916).

23. Yasht, xvii. 25.

24. Yasht, xiii. 137.

25. Mirkhond, History of the Early Kings of Persia, tr. D. Shea, p. 68.

26. Shdhndmah, i. 123; cf. also L. H. Gray, "Festivals and Fasts (Iranian)," in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, v. 873-74, Edin burgh, 1912.

27. Shdhndmah, i. 124.

28. J. Darmesteter, in SEE xxiii. 252, note i.

29. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, ii. 266, note 49.

30. J. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 169.

31. xvii. 4.

32. J. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 167.

33. Shdhndmah, i. 127.

CHAPTER IV. LEGENDS OF YIMA

IN Iranian tradition the short reigns of Gayomart, Hoshang, and Tahmurath were followed, Firdausi says, by a period of seven hundred years during which Jamshid ruled the Iranian world. Jamshid is the Persian form of Yima Khshaeta ("Yima the Brilliant"), the name of a very ancient hero of the Indo-Iranians, and his epithet of "brilliant," which is also applied to the sun, corresponds not only to the early but also to the later conception of this monarch. Firdausi says that he "wore in kingly wise the crown of gold" and that on his jewelled throne he "sat sunlike in mid air.

The world assembled round his throne in wonder At his resplendent fortune." ¹

In the Avesta Yima is the son of Vivanghvant, who first of fered the haoma to Ahura Mazda. Continuing, the poet describes him as

" Brilliant, and with herds full goodly,
Of all men most rich in Glory,
Of mankind like to the sunlight,
So that in his kingdom made he
Beasts and men to be undying,
Plants and waters never drying,
Food invincible bestowing.
In the reign of valiant Yima
Neither cold nor heat was present,
Neither age nor death was present,
Neither envy, demon-founded.
Fifteen years of age in figure
Son and father walked together
All the days Vivanghvant's offspring,
Yima, ruled, with herds full goodly." ²

Thanks to the Glory which long accompanied him, Yima subjugated the daevas and all their imps, taking from them riches and advantage, prosperity and herds, contentment and renown; ³ and Firdausi has faithfully preserved this tradition, declaring that for three hundred years of Yima's reign

"Men never looked on death;
They wotted not of travail or of ill,
And divs like slaves were girt to do them service;
Men hearkened to Jamshid with both their ears,
Sweet voices filled the world with melody." ⁴

The golden age of Yima is an essential element of Zoroastrian chronology. The period between Angra Mainyu'ss in vasion and Zarathushtra's religious reform is divided into three millenniums. The first was the reign of Yima, during which the good creation prevailed, and then came the dominion of Azhi Dahaka (Dahhak), when demons ruled over the world, this being followed by a period of struggle up to Zarathushtra, whose birth Iranian tradition places in 660 B.C. ⁵

Firdausi is obviously wrong in making Jamshid reign seven hundred years only, for it is quite clear that the reigns of Jamshid and Dahhak are in complete parallelism and must last a thousand years each. ⁶ For the Zoroastrians, who conceived illness, death, cold, etc., as the direct products of the Evil Spirit, it was quite natural to admit the existence at the be ginning of the world of a period in which the good creation had not yet felt Angra Mainyu's deleterious influence; and the Iranian climate, moreover, was likely to lead to such a conception, since after a glorious and luxuriant spring it offers the drought of summer and the cold of winter. ⁷

In the Shdhndmah Jamshid says that he is both king and archimage, ⁸ and this seems to have been the old tradition. Yima had been both the material and the spiritual educator of mankind, but the Zoroastrians wished to emphasize that the religious teacher of the Iranians was Zarathushtra, and so they made Yima say to Ahura Mazda :

" I was neither made nor tutored
To receive the faith and spread it";
whereupon Ahura Mazda replies:
"If thou, Yima, art not ready
To receive the faith and spread it,
then further my creatures, then increase my creatures,
then show thyself ready to be both the protector and the
guardian and the watcher of my creatures." ⁹

Accordingly Yima introduces men into their earthly abode like a king of settlers opening new countries to his people each time they fall short of ground to cultivate. He receives from Ahura Mazda a golden arrow and a scourge inlaid with gold, and he undertakes to secure to his subjects a delightful abode with neither cold nor wind, full of flocks and herds, men, dogs, and birds. Three fires protected that beautiful land, the Frobak on the mountain in Khvarizm, the fire Gushasp on Mount Asnavand, and the fire Burzhin Mitro on Mount Revand, ¹⁰ but under such favourable conditions flocks and men increased so much that after three hundred years had passed away, there was no longer room for them. Then Ahura Mazda warned Yima:

"Yim, Vivanghvant's beauteous offspring,
Earth in sooth is overflowing
Both with small beasts and with great beasts,
Men, and dogs, and flying creatures, ¹¹
And with ruddy fires red blazing.
Nor indeed can they find places, small beasts and great beasts and men.
Then at noon Yima went forward to the light, in the direction of the path of the sun,
And earth's surface he abraded
With the arrow, made all golden,
With the scourge he stroked it over,
thus speaking:
O thou holy, dear Armaiti, ¹²
Go thou forward, stretch thyself out
to bear small beasts and great beasts and men.
Then Yima made this earth stretch itself apart a third
larger than it was before. There small beasts and great
beasts and men roved
Just as was their will and pleasure,
Howsoever was his pleasure." ¹³

But a time came when the earth was even thus too small, so that Yima had once more to perform the same rite; and he did this yet again, making the earth increase in size by one third on each occasion, so that after nine hundred years the surface of the world became double what it had been at first.

"Then Ahura Mazda, the Creator, convened an assembly with the spiritual Yazatas u in the famous Airyana Vaejah, at the goodly Daitya. ¹⁵ Then Yima the Brilliant, with goodly flocks, convened an assembly with the best men in the famous Airyana Vaejah, at the goodly Daitya. Then Ahura Mazda spake to Yima: O beauteous Yima, son of Vivanghvant! On the evil material world the winters are about to fall, wherefore there shall be strong, destructive winter; on the evil material world the winters are about to fall, wherefore straightway the clouds shall snow down snow from the loftiest mountains into the depths of Ardvi [Sura Anahita]. 18 Only one-third of the cattle, Yima, will escape of those who live in the most terrible of places, ¹⁷ of those who live on the tops of mountains, of those who live in the valleys of the rivers in permanent abodes. ¹⁸

Till the coming of that winter
Shall the land be clad in verdure,
But the waters soon shall flood it
When the snow hath once been melted,

and, Yima, it will be impassable in the material world where now the footprints of the sheep are visible. Therefore make an enclosure (vara) long as a riding-ground (caretu) on every side of the square; gather together the seed of small cattle and of great cattle, of men and dogs and birds and red, blazing fires. Then make the enclosure long as a riding-ground on every side of the square to be an abode for men, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square as a stall for cattle.

In their course make thou the waters
There flow forth, in width a hathra;
And there shalt thou place the meadows
where unceasingly the golden-coloured, where unceasingly the
invincible food is eaten.
And there shalt thou place the mansions
with cellars and vestibules, with bastions and ramparts.

"Gather together the seed of all men and women that are the greatest and the best and the finest on this earth; gather together the seed of all kinds of cattle that are the greatest and the best and the finest on this earth; gather together the seed of all plants that are the tallest and the sweetest on this earth; gather together the seed of all fruits that are the most edible and the sweetest on this earth. Bring these by pairs to be inexhaustible so long as these men shall stay in the enclosure. There will be no admittance there for humpback or chicken-breast, for apdvaya lunacy, birth-mark, daiwish kasvish,¹⁹ mis-shapenness, men with deformed teeth or with leprosy that compels seclusion, nor any of the other marks which are the mark of Angra Mainyu laid upon men. In the largest part of the place thou shalt make nine streets, in the middle six, and in the smallest three. In the streets of the largest part gather a thousand seeds of men and women, in those of the middle part six hundred, in those of the smallest part three hundred. With thy golden arrow thou shalt mark thine enclosure,

And bring thou to the enclosure
a shining door, on its inner side shining by its own light." ²⁰

At this Yima was much at a loss and wondered how he could ever make such an enclosure. Ahura Mazda, however, told him to stamp the earth with his heels and to knead it with his hands, as people do when now they knead potter's clay; and then Yima made exactly what Ahura Mazda had commanded. When all was ready, Ahura Mazda provided the vara with special lights, because only once a year can they who dwell there see sun, moon, and stars rising and setting, so that they think that a year is but one day. Every fortieth year a male and female are born to each human pair, and thus it is for every sort of animal. These men live a happy life in the enclosure of Yima, but since Zarathushtra, the prophet, had no access to it, the religion was brought thither by the bird Karshiptar. ²¹

The Avesta does not give any precise indication as to the time of the coming of the winter predicted by Mazda, and though it looks as if that scourge afflicted mankind in ancient times, later books show that this was not the case. The fatal and destructive winter is to occur in the last period of the world. Three hundred years before the birth of Ukhshyat-nemah (one of the sons of Zarathushtra who are to be born in the last millennium of the world) the demon Mahrkusha will destroy mankind by snow and frost within the space of three years, after which Yima's enclosure will be opened and the earth will again be populated. The name of this demon Mahrkusha means "Destroyer, Devastator," and is of Iranian formation, but in later times it was confused with the Aramaic word malqos, "autumnal rain," so that in more recent texts the idea of the fatal freezing winter was abandoned for that of the deluging rain of Malqos. ²²

A tradition which dates from very ancient days represents Yima as diverging at a certain moment from the path of justice. He commits a fault, and from that instant he loses his Glory and his kingdom and finally is put to death, while a devilish being named Dahhak (the old Avestic dragon Azhi Dahaka) extends his power over the world of the Aryans.

As to the nature of Yima's sin some uncertainty prevails in the tradition. Nevertheless, there are certain hints that this fault consisted in having rendered his subjects immortal by giving them forbidden food to eat, and in the Gathss of Zoroaster the poet prays to Ahura Mazda in order to avoid such sins as that of Yima, who gave men meat to eat in small pieces, as it was offered to the gods in sacrifice. ²⁴ A late book, on the other hand, relates that Yima unwittingly gave meat to a daeva, ²⁴ although the most current form of the legend is that Yima

"In his mind began to dwell on Words of falsehood and of untruth." ²⁵

Firdausi explains that Yima's lie was in reality a sin of presumption.

"One day contemplating the throne of power
He deemed that he was peerless. He knew God,
But acted frowardly and turned aside
In his ingratitude. He summoned all
The chiefs, and what a wealth of words he used!
The world is mine, I found its properties,
The royal throne hath seen no king like me,
For I have decked the world with excellence
And fashioned earth according to my will.
From me derive your provand, ease, and sleep,
Your raiment and your pleasure. Mine are greatness
And diadem and sovereignty. Who saith
That there is any great king save myself?
Leechcraft hath cured the world, disease and death
Are stayed. Though kings are many who but I
Saved men from death? Ye owe me sense and life: They who adore me not are Ahrimans.
So now that ye perceive what I have done
All hail me as the Maker of the world. " ²⁶

Another story of Yima's sin is connected with the fact that he had a sister Yimak who, as is the case with all primeval pairs, was also his wife. Various moral considerations regard ing the incestuous union of this twin pair have been made for Yama and Yami in India as well as for Yima and Yimaka in Iran. In India a Vedic hymn²⁷ records a conversation between the twins in which Yama refuses to do what the sages at that time condemned as a grave sin, whereas in the Pahlavi books the union of Yim and Yimak is given as an example of the Khvetok-das, or incestuous marriage, which was recommended by the Mazdeans at one period in their history. In the Bundahish²⁸ Yima is said to have given his sister to a demon after he had been blinded by folly at the end of his reign, and to have himself married a demoness, these unions result ing in monstrous and degenerate beings, such as tailed apes.

Whatever Yima's sin may have been, the king soon received his punishment, for the Glory (Khvarenanh), an emanation of divine radiancy that gave prestige to the Iranian monarchs, deserted him immediately and left him trembling, confounded, and defenceless before his foes. The first time that the Glory departed from Yima, it was in the shape of a Vareghna bird, and Mithra, the lord of broad pastures, whose ear is quick to hear, and who has a thousand senses, seized it. The second time that the Glory departed from Yima the Brilliant, it was seized by Thraetaona, the victorious hero who after a thousand years was to take from the devilish Dahhak (Azhi Dahaka) the realm which Yima lost. The third time it was the manly-minded Keresaspa who seized the Glory, and who also was to be a valiant and victorious ruler of the Iranians.²⁹

Yima, deprived of the Glory that made his power, was over come by a being of decidedly mythical nature, the famous serpent Azhi Dahaka, whom we have seen to be an incarnation of the storm-cloud. In later texts this monster is called by a Semitic name, Dahhak ("the Man with a Sarcastic Laugh"), but this is merely a popular etymology, a pun on his real appellation. He is now an Arab king, living in Babylon, and in the Avesta itself we read that Azhi Dahaka, the triple-mouthed, offered sacrifice to Ardvi Sura in the land of Bawri (Babylon), wishing to become the ruler of the world and to make the seven regions of earth empty of men. Although his prayer was not granted to such an extent, he overcame Yima and made cap tives of his two sisters, Sanghavak and Arenavak.³⁰ If in the Avesta Azhi Dahaka still has three mouths like the dragon, in the Shdhndmah he is completely a man, though he has two snakes springing from his shoulders, where they grew through a kiss of Angra Mainyu, a legend which recurs in Armenia. In the presence of this monstrous fiend Yima

"fled, surrendering crown, throne and treasure,
Host, power and diadem. The world turned black
To him, he disappeared and yielded all."³¹

For a hundred years he hid himself, but then appeared one day in the Far East, on the shores of the Chinese sea, where his foe, informed of the fact, gave him no respite, and sawing him asunder, freed the world from him. In the older texts it is Spityura, a brother of Yima, who sawed Yima in twain.³² Sometimes it is explained that he was in a hollow tree, where he had concealed himself; but by the command of Dahhak the stem of the tree was severed by the saw, and with it the man inside.³³

The story of Yima is the most interesting and the only extensive myth of the Iranians, and it is certain that the legend dates back to Aryan, or at least to Indo-Iranian, times.

As the Avesta knows of Yima, son of Vivanghvant, so the Veda speaks of Yama, son of Vivasvant. As Yima is the chief of a remote kingdom, a marvellous realm where there is neither cold nor suffering, so Yama is the ruler of the fathers, the departed souls, with whom he revels in a huge tree. Just as Yima's vara is concealed either on a mountain or in some recess where sun and moon are not seen, Yama's dwelling is in the remote part of the sky. While Yima calls a gathering of men to assemble them in his vara, Yama collects the people and gives the dead a resting-place. Yima has opened the earth for mankind; Yama is "lord of the settlers" (vispati) and "father." Yima has found new countries, following a road toward the sun; Yama has a path for the dead to lead them to their abode, being the first to die and having discovered "a way for many." A bird brings messages into Yima's vara; Yama has the owl or the pigeon as his envoy.

In spite of these points in common, there is an important discrepancy. Yama is the first mortal being and is clearly associated with death and with a kingdom of the departed, whereas Yima is simply a monarch of ancient times, his reign is a golden age for mankind, and his enclosure has no clear location.

This divergency is explained by the fact that the Iranians had another legend for the first man: the story of Gaya Maretan, which dates back to the Aryan period. Thus, owing to the desire of the Iranians for a more coherent system of mythology, the concurrent legend of Yima has been transferred into later, though still primeval, times, although Yima has remained and this is very eloquent the first sacrificer, the patriarchal lord of mankind at the dawn of history.

The story of Yama as it is in India³⁴ is clearly a legend accounting for the origin of man, but the primitive shape of the story is probably an elemental myth. Several scholars have endeavoured to show that Yama originally was the sun, and although this has never been conclusively demonstrated, there is much to be said in favour of the hypothesis.

It is certain that in the Veda Yama is often treated as a god. He is the friend of Agni and sometimes is identified with him. He is the son of the deity Vivasvant ("Whose Light Spreads Afar"), who most probably was at first the rising sun³⁵ and who was also father of the Asvins (the morning and the evening star).

The evidence concerning Yama- Yima is, on the whole, that he is the setting sun. He follows the path of the sun to go to a remote recess, whither he leads all men with him. The path of the sun was a very natural symbol of the path of human life, the same words were used in Sanskrit for the death of men and for the sunset,³⁶ and Indian literature declares that the sun is the sure retreat. The sun is a bird or has birds as its messengers, like Yama; and like a sun-god Yama has two steeds, golden-eyed and iron-hoofed.

In Iran the solar nature of Yima is rather more accentuated than in India, and the old epithets of Yima are striking in this respect. He is commonly called khshaeta (" brilliant"), an adjective which is at the same time the regular epithet of the sun (hvare khshaeta, Persian khurshid); and moreover he is khvarenanguhastema ("the most glorious, the most surrounded with light") and hvare-daresa ("who looks like the sun, the sun-like one"). These epithets, which are very natural as a sur vival if Yima had once been the sun, would be incomprehensi ble if he was originally the first man and nothing more. He is also hvathwa ("with goodly herds"), an adjective that very possibly alludes to the stars following the setting sun in his retreat, especially as stars are said in Vedic literature to be the lights of virtuous men who go to the heavenly world,³⁷ so that they would thus form the natural flock of Yima. Yima's golden arrow reminds us strikingly of a similar missile in the hands of his father Vivasvant in the Veda, by means of which he sends men to the realm of the dead.³⁸ Other luminous gods, like Apollo, show the same features, and it seems not improbable that these arrows are the rays of the sun.

The brilliancy of Yima was so deeply rooted in tradition that Firdausi is still more definite about it. As we have already seen, Jamshid sits like the sun in mid air, his fortune and his throne are resplendent, and the royal Glory shines brightly from him. That this dates back to ancient sources is proved by the fact that Firdausi has a very curious sentence about Yima which is not at all in keeping with the nature of Jamshid as a worldly king; he puts in the monarch's mouth the words, "I will make for souls a path toward the light." This is taken from the passage already quoted from the Vendidad in which Yima goes toward the path of the sun to open earth for men, and it shows that this typical action of Yima may originally have been meant for the dead: Yima used to lead the departed toward the sun, on the way of the sun that is the path of Yima.

The end of Yima is also very characteristic. When his brilliancy quits him, the world turns black to him and he vanishes. When he appears again, it is in the distant east, where the sun rises.

A solar year-myth seems likewise to have been involved in the story, for Yima is the founder of the feast of Nauruz, the New Year's Day that with the Persians occurs in March at the beginning of the radiant spring. Yima's vernal kingdom is destroyed by the demon of cold and frost (Mahrkusha), yet the sun and life do not disappear forever from the world, but are kept in reserve for the next spring, like the beings in Yima's vara. As we have seen, the legend of Yima as told in the Fendlddd expressly says that in the vara one year is one day. The disappearance of the sun in winter is thus assimilated to its daily departure to the remote recess in the world of darkness, and the story of Yima's century of concealment until he reappears in the East is very much in the same spirit.

The connexion of Yima with a tree reminds us of Yama's abode in a high tree, and in the Atharvaveda an arboreal dwelling-place is the home of the gods in the third heaven.³⁹

No doubt other stories have come to be mixed up with the solar myths of the departed souls. Thus the legend of Yima's defeat by a storm-cloud monster, Azhi Dahaka, is probably borrowed from the very prolific storm-myth of which we have heard so many times. The abduction of Yima's two fair sis ters and their release by the storm-god Thraetaona is a mere variation of the release of the imprisoned cows by this god,⁴⁰ although the sisters are at the same time, possibly, a reminis cence of Yama's two brilliant steeds.

The description of the monster's victory over Yima in Firdausi has many features of a storm-myth:

"The king of dragon-visage came like wind
>And having seized the throne of Shah Jamshid
Slipped on the world as it were a finger-ring."⁴¹

The palace of the dragon, which is called kvirinta, is compared to a bird with large wings.⁴²

Finally, the story of Yima and Yama is closely related to that of the twins Yama- Yarn! or Yima-Yimak, who after much hesitation agree to have intercourse with one another and become the parents of mankind. In Iran the tradition is a doublet of the legend of Mashya and Mashyoi, in which similar hesitations occur. It seems clear enough that such a story has been invented to account for the propagation of human beings from one single pair.

Since the word "Yama" means "twin," it is fairly probable that this story belongs originally to Yama, although it is also possible, as several scholars admit, that Yarn! has been in vented later and that Yama was primarily the twin of an other being, perhaps Agni (fire of earth and fire on high), or that he was the soul of the departed considered as the alter ego of the living man.⁴³ It might seem preferable, however, to abide by the most natural explanation and admit that Yama is the male twin of Yami. Now the twin pair had to come from some pre-existent being, as was the case with Mashya and Mashyoi, who sprang from Gaya Maretan's seed. In the legend of Yima, some traces are left of a story that made the first pair arise from the violent division of one being. Yima is sawn asunder a curious feature which is much in the spirit of mythical stories among people of fairly elementary culture. Among the Indo-Europeans we know of the Indian first man Purusa, who differentiated himself into two beings, husband and wife. On the other hand, the Slavonic people tell the story that the moon, the wife of the sun, separated herself from him and fell in love with the morning star, whereupon she was cut in two by the sword of Perkunas. Comparing this myth with the Iranian legend that the seed of the primeval ox was preserved in the moon, one wonders if there are no traces of that Indo-European tradition in the story of Yima. At all events it is clear that Yima's legend combines several conceptions concerning the first man and the dead. The old myth of the pair issued from the first giant became mixed with a more poetic conception which made the setting sun the first departed, the father of the fathers, as well as with a myth of winter, and possibly with a moon-myth accounting for the division of the moon into quarters and a storm-myth in its classical tenure. The idea of Yima's sin is so very Zoroastrian in its form that it can scarcely be regarded as belonging to the original story. In the primitive myth Yima obviously fell a victim in a struggle with a dragon of darkness (cloud or night). There was, however, perhaps a tradition of a fault committed by the first men, accounting for the evils reigning on earth, a conception which is, as a matter of fact, very widely spread, quite independently of any Semitic or Christian influence.

Before relating the stories concerning other legendary kings of Iran, we should point to the large development which Yima s story received in later times. All kinds of great deeds were attributed to King Jamshid, especially his institution of castes, his medical knowledge, and his works as a constructor.

"Then to the joy of all he founded castes
For every craft; it took him fifty years.
Distinguishing one caste as sacerdotal
To be employed in sacred offices,
He separated it from other folk
And made its place of service on the mountains
That God might be adored in quietude.
Arrayed for battle on the other hand
Were those who formed the military caste;
They were the lion-men inured to war
The Lights of armies and of provinces
Whose office was to guard the royal throne
And vindicate the nation's name for valour.
The third caste was the agricultural,
All independent tillers of the soil,
The sowers and the reapers men whom none
Upbraideth when they eat.
The fourth caste was the artizans. They live
By doing handiwork a turbulent crew."⁴⁴

This tradition of Yima's activity is probably fairly ancient. He was indeed the material organizer of mankind, and the castes were already in existence in the days of Zoroaster, for the Gdthds know of a caste of priests, of nobles or warriors, and of farmers. The location of priests on the mountains curiously recalls the fact that the heroes of ancient times are represented in the Avesta as offering their sacrifices on the mountain-tops, and Herodotus reports the same thing concerning the Persians in his day: "It is their wont to perform sacrifices to Zeus, going up to the most lofty of the mountains; and the whole circle of the heavens they call Zeus."⁴⁵

Regarding the farmers Firdausi says, in the passage from which we have just quoted, that,

"Though clothed in rags,
The wearers are not slaves, and sounds of chiding
Reach not their ears. They are free men and labour
Upon the soil safe from dispute and contest.
What said the noble man and eloquent?
T is idleness that maketh freemen slaves."

This high appreciation of the agricultural caste is also very much in the spirit of Zoroastrianism.

As regards his medical skill, Jamshid is said to have known

"Next leechcraft and the healing of the sick,
The means of health, the course of maladies."⁴⁶

Moreover he made use of his marvellous power to search among the rocks for precious stones, he knew the arts of naviga tion, and his wisdom brought to light the properties of all things. It is doubtful, however, whether his functions as a healer were primitive, for the medical art is more properly ascribed to Faridun (Thraetaona) or to Irman (Airyaman).

Yima's works as a constructor were better known, and many an old ruin today is still ascribed to him by the Persians. This fame is, Firdausi continues, a result of his subjugation of the demons, whom he instructed how to

"Temper earth with water
And taught them how to fashion moulds for bricks.
They laid foundations first with stones and lime,
Then raised thereon by rules of art such structures
As hot baths, lofty halls, and sanctuaries."

Even more is ascribed to Jamshid by the writers of Muhammadan times. As a wise king of great brilliancy he was assimilated to Solomon, while as a primeval monarch and probably as the builder of the enclosure against the destructive winter he was confused with Noah. Either on account of this or because his wisdom brought to light the properties of things he was supposed to have discovered wine. Mirkhond tells an anecdote about this.⁴⁷ Having tried the taste of the juice of grapes, the king observed a sensation of bitterness and conceived aversion for it, thinking that it was a deadly poison. A damsel of the palace, seized with violent pain in her head, longed for death and accordingly resolved to drink of the juice that was deemed poisonous. She did not die, however, but drank so much of it that she fell into a beneficent sleep which lasted an entire day and night. On awaking she found herself restored to perfect health, and for this reason the monarch ordered the general use of wine.

NOTES

1. Shdhndmah, i. 131, 133.

2. Yasna, ix. 4-5.

3. Yasht, xix. 31-32.

4. Shdhndmah, i. 134.

5. E. W. West, in SEE xlvii. p. xxix.

6. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, ii. 18.

7. J. Ehni, Der vedische My thus des Yama, Strassburg, 1890, p. 171.

8. Shdhndmah, i. 131.

9. Vendlddd, ii. 3-4. The second and fourth lines of verse read, more literally, "to remember and carry the religion." In the first line of Ahura Mazda's speech me ("my") has been omitted as unmetrical both in Avesta and in English.

10. Bundahish, xvii. 5-8. Cf. the enumeration of the fires, supra, p. 285.

11. This line is unmetrical in the original (mashyandmca sundmcavaydmca). The second or third word (probably the latter) apparently should be omitted.

12. Goddess of the earth.

13. Vendlddd, ii. 9-11.

14. Worshipful beings.

15. A mythical land, at one time identified with the valley of the Aras in Transcaucasia.

16. The river-goddess; cf. supra, p. 278.

17. The deserts (C. Bartholomae, Altiranisches Worterbuch, col. 1799).

18. In stalls (C. Bartholomae, Altiranisches Worterbuch, col. 819).

19. The meaning of these terms is unknown. The Editor suggests that kasvlsh may mean "dwarfishness" (cf. Avesta kasu, "small," kasvika "trifling").

20. Vendlddd, ii. 21-31.

21. Vendlddd, ii. 31-42.

22. Dlnkart, XII. ix. 3 (tr. E. W. West, in SEE xlvii. 108).

23. Yasna, xxxii. 8; cf. J. H. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, p. 149; C. Bartholomae, Altiranisches Worterbuch, col. 1866.

24. Sad-Dar, xciv. (tr. T. Hyde, Historia religionis veterum Persarum, p. 485).

25. Yasht, xix. 33.

26. Shdhndmah, i. 134.

27. Rgveda, X. x; cf. supra, p. 68.

28. Bundahish, xxiii. I.

29. yflj/tf, xix. 34-38.

30. Yasht, v. 29-34.

31. Shdhndmah, i. 140.

32. Yasht, xix. 46.

33. Mirkhond, History of the Early Kings of Persia, tr. D. Shea, p. 120.

34. See supra, pp. 68-69; cf- also pp. 99-100, 159-61, 214-15.

35. A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, Strassburg, 1897, p. 43.

36. J. Ehni, Die urspriingliche Gottheit des vedischen Yama, Leip zig, 1896, p. 8.

37. A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, Strassburg, 1897, p. 167; cf. Rgveda, X. Ixviii. II, "the manes have adorned the sky with constellations, like a black horse with pearls."

38. Rgveda, X. Ixv. 6.

39. Rgveda, X. cxxxv. i (cf. A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, Strassburg, 1897, p. 167); Atharvaveda, V. iv. 3.

40. J. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 107.

41. Shdhndmah, i. 139-40.

42. J. Darmesteter, Etudes iraniennes, ii. 210-12.

43. E. H. Meyer, Indogermanische Mythen, Berlin, 1883-87, i. 229.

44. Shdhndmah, i. 132.

45. i. i. 32.

46. Shdhndmah, i. 133.

47. Mirkhond, History of the Early Kings of Persia, tr. D. Shea, p. 103.

CHAPTER V.
TRADITIONS OF THE KINGS AND ZOROASTER

THE serpent-like dragon of the storm-cloud described as the three-headed monster in Indo-European myths has often appeared in our account of Iranian mythology. We have seen how the cloud was forgotten for the serpent, and how the ser pent became a human monster, the conqueror of Yima. Of his dragon nature he preserves a dragon-like face and two snakes on his shoulders, the fruit of Angra Mainyu's kisses. As we find the legend in Firdausi in a completely anthropomorphized shape, it retains many features of the myth in the form in which it appears in its most complete version in Armenian books: the monstrous dragon Azhdak (Azhi Dahaka), with serpents sprung from his shoulders and served by a host of demons, is conquered by Vahagn (Verethraghna), the hero who replaces Faridun (Thraetaona) in Armenian Mazdean myth ology, and the demon is fettered in a gorge on Mount Damavand, the serpents sprung from his shoulders being fed on human flesh. We find all these features in Firdausi's account. Dahhak every night sent to his cook two youths who were slaughtered so that their brains might feed the snakes. Two high-born Persians disguised as cooks devised a scheme to rescue one youth from each pair doomed to death, and when the young men who escaped, thanks to their contrivance, fled to the mountains,

"Thus sprang the Kurds, who know no settled home,
But dwell in woolen tents and fear not God." ¹

Like the dragon of old, Dahhak is a coward who lives in constant terror because his death at the hand of Faridun has been predicted in a dream which he had one night when he was sleeping with one of Jamshld's sisters. Like the serpent of early myth, who roared at the blows of the storm-god, he yells with fright through fear of Faridun.

Dahhak is not merely a wicked and maleficent being, but is also the personification of tyranny and barbarity in contrast with Iranian civilization. Like rude tribes at war in all times, he knows only massacre, pillage, and arson. In his kingdom oppression reigns, and like all tyrants he desires the best of his subjects to give official excuse to his abuses.

"He called the notables from every province
To firm the bases of his sovereignty,
And said to them: Good, wise, illustrious men!
I have, as sages wot, an enemy
Concealed, and I through fear of ill to come
Despise not such though weak. I therefore need
A larger host men, divs, and fairies too
And ask your aid, for rumours trouble me;
So sign me now a scroll to this effect:
"Our monarch soweth naught but seeds of good,
He ever speaketh truth and wrongeth none. "
Those upright men both young and old subscribed
Their names upon the Dragon's document,
Against their wills, because they feared the Shah."²

All this is in complete contrast to the Iranian ideal of order, truth, and wisdom, and accordingly Dahhak is the type of the dregvant, the man of the Lie and the king of madmen.

"Zahhak sat on the throne a thousand years
Obeyed by all the world. Through that long time
The customs of the wise were out of vogue,
The lusts of madmen flourished everywhere,
All virtue was despised, black art esteemed,
Right lost to sight, disaster manifest;
While divs accomplished their fell purposes
And no man spake of good unless by stealth." ³

As if by a natural instinct of justice, the tyrant in his abuses is pursued by fear of punishment. After the dream which we have already mentioned Dahhak runs about the world, quarrelling and slaughtering men and nations to anticipate the attack of him who is to satisfy the popular conscience by causing his ruin. He has an army of spies, among them being Kundrav, a very ancient mythical creature of the Indo-Iranians (Sanskrit Gandharva, Avesta Gandarewa), who appears in the Avesta as a dragon killed by Keresaspa. Kundrav manages to penetrate into Faridun's tent when he is at table, and having gained his confidence, he notes all his preparations against Dahhak, after which, escaping from the hero's camp, he makes a full report to the tyrant. Dahhak endeavours to avert his destined ruin, but in vain, for he is opposed by Faridun, endowed with the kingly Glory of Yima, and tall and firm like a cypress. ⁴ Abtin (i.e. Thrita Athwya), the father of Faridun (Thraetaona), had been killed by Dahhak to feed the serpents, and his son planned revenge for this ignominious murder, another task being the release of the two sisters of Jamshid (Yima), who had been surrendered to the monster when their brother fell.

"Trembling like a willow-leaf,
Men bore them to the palace of Zahhak
And gave them over to the dragon king,
Who educated them in evil ways
And taught them sorcery and necromancy." ⁵

After Faridun had taken possession of Dahhak's palace,

"Then from the women's bower he brought two Idols
Sun-faced, dark-eyed; he had them bathed, he purged
The darkness of their minds by teaching them
The way of God and made them wholly clean;
For idol-worshippers had brought them up
And they were dazed in mind like drunken folk.
Then while the tears from their bright eyes bedewed
Their rosy cheeks those sisters of Jamshid
Said thus to Faridun: Mayst thou be young
Till earth is old! What star was this of thine,
O favoured one! What tree bore thee as fruit,
Who venturest inside the Lion ' lair
So hardily, thou mighty man of valour? " ⁶

It is curious to see the old myth of the release of the women of the clouds transformed into a merely romantic episode, and one wonders whether the bath which the women must undergo is not a remnant of their sojourn in the waters on high.

Faridun then assails Dahhak with a lasso made of lion's hide, and while the dragon king, blinded by jealousy at the sight of

"dark-eyed Shahrinaz,
Who toyed bewitchingly with Faridun," ⁷

rushed about like a madman, the hero bound him around the arms and waist with bonds that not even a huge elephant could snap. He conveyed the captive to Mount Damavand, where he fettered him in a narrow gorge and studded him with heavy nails, leaving him to hang, bound by his hands, to a crag, so that his anguish might endure. He is not killed by the hero because in myth the storm-dragon does not die, but often escapes from the hold of the light-god.

Tradition knows little of Faridun outside of his healing power and his victory over the dragon. Nevertheless the Dlnkart ⁸ mentions the division of .his kingdom between his sons Salm, Tur, and Iraj; and the Bundahish ⁹ explains that the two former killed the latter, as well as his posterity, with the exception of a daughter who was concealed by Faridun and who bore the hero Manushcithra, or Minucihr, the successor of Faridun. The legends concerning these princes thus date back to a fairly ancient period, although it is doubtful whether they had the amplitude and the character which they assume in Firdausi's epic. These stories are not mythical, but merely epic, and they centre about the jealousy of two older brothers who, envious of the younger son of Faridun because he was braver and more beloved by his father, treacherously put him to death. Manushcithra, grandson of the unfortunate Iraj. was to be the avenger of his grandfather, aided by Keresaspa (Garshasp), an ancient hero, who occupies a very secondary position in the Shdhndmah, but is, nevertheless, one of the greatest figures of old Iranian tradition. Keresaspa, whose name means "with slender horses," is another son of Thrita Athwya, the father of Faridun (Thraetaona) and seems originally to have been a doublet of the latter, especially as his main exploit is also the slaying of dragons.

With his strength and his club Keresaspa is the Hercules of Iran, and it is not in the least remarkable that he is supposed to have slain many foes both human and demoniacal, among them being not only Gandarewa and Srvara, but also Vareshava, Pitaona, Arezo-shamana, the sons of Nivika and of Dashtayani, the nine sons of Pathana, Snavidhka, and the nine sons of Hitaspa, the murderer of his brother Urvakhshaya. ¹⁰ Moreover he is one of the heroes who, at the end of time, when Azhi Dahaka (Dahhak) will escape from the place of concealment where Thraetaona (Faridun) has fettered him, will slay the dragon and free the world.

He has accomplished his exploits under the protection of a third part of Yima's Glory (KhvarenanH) and he is, therefore, worshipped by the warriors to obtain strength "to withstand the dreadful arm and the hordes with wide battle array, with the large banner, the flag uplifted, the flag unfolded, the bloody flag; to withstand the brigand havoc- working, horrible, man-slaying, and pitiless; to withstand the evil done by the brigand." ¹¹

Among Keresaspa's feats some are described in the Avesta and in the Pahlavi books. ¹² His most dreadful fight was with the dragon Srvara ("Horned"),

"Which devoured men and horses,
Which was venomous and yellow,
Over which a flood of venom
Yellow poured, its depth a spear's length,

On whose back did Keresaspa ¹³
Cook food in an iron kettle
As the sun drew nigh the zenith.
Heated grew the fiend and sweaty,
Forth from neath the kettle sprang he
And the boiling water scattered.
To one side in terror darted
Manly-minded Keresaspa."

The Pahlavi sources further inform us that the dragon's teeth were as long as an arm, its ears as great as fourteen blankets, its eyes as large as wheels, and its horn as high as Dahhak. Undismayed, Keresaspa sprang on its back and ran for half a day on it, and, notwithstanding his alarm, finally contrived to smite its neck with his famous club, thus slaying the monster with a single blow.

In the case of Gandarewa the victory was no less brilliant. The personality of this demon is very interesting, for he is an Indo-Iranian spirit of the deep. ¹⁴ In India his abode is gen erally in the regions of the sky, where he hovers as a bright meteor, though he often appears likewise in the depths of the waters, where he courts the aqueous nymphs, the Apsarases, so that he becomes a genius of fertility. In Iran Gandarewa is a lord of the abyss who dwells in the waters and is the master of the deep. Sometimes he is a beneficent being who brings the haoma, but more often he withholds the plant as its jealous guardian. He is decidedly a fiend, although he has preserved the epithet "golden-heeled" to remind us of his previous brilliancy. He is a dragon like Azhi Dahaka or Srvara, ¹⁵ rushing on with open jaws, eager to destroy the world of the good creation. As Keresaspa went to meet him, he saw dead men sticking in Gandarewa's teeth, and when the monster had seized the hero's beard, both began to fight in the sea. After a conflict of nine days and nights Keresaspa overcame his ad versary, and grasping the sole of his foot, he flayed off his skin up to his head and bound him hand and foot, dragging him to the shore of the sea. Even so, the fiend was not wholly subjugated, but slaughtered and ate Keresaspa's fifteen horses and pushed the hero himself blinded into a dense thicket. Meanwhile he carried off the hero's wife and family, but Keres aspa quickly recovered, went out to the sea, released the pris oners, and slew the fiend. ¹⁶

Of Snavidhka it is recorded that he used to kill men with his nails, and that his hands were like stones. To all he shouted:

" I am immature, not mature;
But if I attain to manhood,
Of the earth a wheel I'11 make me,
Of the sky I'll make a chariot;
I 11 bring down the Holy Spirit
From the House of Praise ¹⁷ all radiant,
Angra Mainyu I'11 make fly up
From the hideous depths of Hades;
And they twain shall draw my chariot,
Both those spirits, good and evil,
if the manly-minded Keresaspa slay me not.
The manly-minded Keresaspa slew him." ¹⁸

Arezo-shamana was a more sympathetic adversary, brave and valiant, always on his guard, and supple in his mode of fighting. Hitaspa was the murderer of Keresaspa's brother Urvakhshaya, a "wise chief of assemblies," and to avenge this crime the hero smote Hitaspa and bore him back on his chariot. ¹⁹

Moreover the Iranian Hercules purged the land of highway men, who were so huge that the people used to say, "Below them are the stars and moon, and below them moves the sun at dawn, and the water of the sea reaches up to their knees." ²⁰ Since Keresaspa could stretch no higher, he smote them on their legs, and falling, they shattered the hills on the earth.

A gigantic bird named Kamak, which overshadowed the earth and kept off the rain till the rivers dried up, eating up men and animals as if they were grains of corn, was also killed by Keresaspa, who shot arrows at it constantly for seven days and nights. ²¹ This story is evidently the adulterated form of an old myth of storm or rain.

A wolf called Kaput or Pehm likewise fell, together with its nine cubs, at the hand of Keresaspa, ²² who was also compelled to fight even with the elements of nature, the wind being tempted to assail him when the demons said, "See, Keresaspa despises thee and resists thee, more than anyone else." Aroused by the taunt, the wind came on so strongly that every tree and shrub in its path was uprooted, while by its breath the whole earth was reduced to powder, and a dark cloud of dust arose. When it came to Keresaspa, however, it could not even move him from the spot, and the hero, seizing the spirit of the wind, overthrew him until he promised to go again below the earth. ²³

Unfortunately, the conqueror of so many foes was himself conquered by a woman, a witch (pairika) called Khnathaiti, who was in the court of Pitaona, a prince whom Keresaspa had also killed. ²⁴ Under the influence of his wife he became addicted to Turanian idolatry and completely neglected the maintenance of the sacred fire. On account of this grievous sin Ahura Mazda permitted him to be wounded during his sleep by one of the Turks with whom he lived in the plain of Peshyansai, and though he was not killed, he was brought into a state of lethargy. ²⁵ Since that moment he has lain there in slumber, protected by the kingly Glory which he took from Yima and by nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine Fravashis, or guardian spirits. ²⁶ Thus he will remain till the end of the world, when Dahhak (Azhi Dahaka), fettered by Faridun on Mount Damavand, will be released by the powers of evil, who will rally for the last struggle against good. Freed from his chains, Dahhak will rush forth in fury and swallow everything on his way: a third of mankind, cattle, and sheep. He will smite the water, fire, and vegetation, and will commit all possible abuses. Then the water, the fire, and the vegeta tion will lament before Ahura Mazda and pray that Faridun may be revived to slay Dahhak, else fire declares that it will not heat, and water that it will flow no more. Then Mazda will send Sraosha to rouse Keresaspa, whom he will call three times. At the fourth summons the hero will wake and go forth to encounter Dahhak, and smiting him on the head with his famous club, will slay him, the death of the arch-fiend marking the beginning of the era of happiness.

Till then, however, as long as Keresaspa is asleep, his soul must make its abode either in paradise or in hell, but since the heinous offence which he committed against the fire made entrance into paradise very difficult for him in spite of all his exploits, he was sent to hell, though Zarathushtra obtained the promise that he would be summoned by Ahura Mazda. He complained at the hideous sights which he saw in the realm of punishment and said that he did not deserve such misery, for he had been a priest in Kabul, but Ahura Mazda with great severity reminded him of the fire, his son, which had been extinguished by him. He then implored Mazda's pardon, reciting all the deeds which he had performed: "If Srvara, the dragon, had not been killed by me, all thy creatures would have been annihilated by it. If Gandarewa had not been slain by me, Angra Mainyu would have become predominant over thy creatures " ; but Mazda was inflexible: " Stand off, thou soul of Keresaspa! for thou shouldst be hideous in my eyes, because the fire, which is my son, was extinguished by thee." Never theless, when the spirits in heaven heard of Keresaspa s valorous feats, they wept aloud, and Zarathushtra intervened, so that after a discussion between him and the spirit of fire, who pleaded against Keresaspa, Geush Urvan made supplication unto Mazda, while Zarathushtra, to propitiate Atar's wrath, vowed that he would provide that the sanctity of the fire should be maintained on earth, wherefore the hero's soul was finally admitted into Garotman ("House of Praise," "Paradise"). ²⁷

As has already been said, no fair place is granted to the great national hero in the Shdhndmah, his personality being divided by splitting the name Sama Keresaspa Naire-manah into several personalities. In this way Sam became the grandfather, and Nariman the great-grandfather, of Rustam, who took the place of Keresaspa as the Hercules of Iran, whereas Garshasp, the tenth Shah, who bears Keresaspa's name, is little more than a shadowy personality.²⁸

Garshasp appears for the first time as a prince who helped Minucihr (Manushcithra) to take revenge for the death of his grandfather Iraj at the hands of his two brothers. Firdausi does not make it quite clear whether this Garshasp is identical with the one who reigned as the tenth Shah, but it seems more than likely that the two Garshasps are the remnants of a hero who has been stripped of his exploits by the popularity of the new comer Rustam and his family, the deeds of the Rustamids being the central subject of Firdausi's epic throughout the reigns of several Shahs, beginning with Minucihr.

Minucihr himself seems to be a faded personality. His name, Manushcithra, appears in the Avesta ²⁹ and means "off spring of Manu" (the Vedic name of the first man), whereas in Pahlavi literature it was held to signify "born on Mount Manush." ³⁰ Besides his punishment of his grandfather's murderers, the Bundahish records that he mounted a sheep of the kind called kurishk, which was as high as a steed. He had a prosperous reign during which he made canals to regulate the course of the rivers, but for twelve years he was a captive of the Turanian king Afrasiyab (Pahlavi Frasiyav, the Frangrasyan of the Avesta), who confined him in a mountain gorge and kept him there in misery till Aghrerat (Avesta Aghraeratha, Persian Ighrirath) saved him from his distress and conse quently was slain by the tyrant. ³¹ This is not much, but is more than is told by the Shdhndmah, which, indeed, devotes its account of Minucihr's reign to the facts in connexion with Rustam's birth.

Sam is the most prominent vassal of Minucihr. He is, as already noted, a fragment of Keresaspa's personality and be trays his origin in telling stories of dragons slain by him with a club that weighed three hundred mans. ³² His adversary was

"Like some mad elephant, with Indian sword
In hand. Methought, O Shah! that e en the mountains
Would cry to him for quarter! He pressed on,
>Then like a maddened elephant I dashed him
Upon the ground so that his bones were shivered."

More striking still is the slaying of the dragon which haunted the river Kashaf :

"That dragon cleared the sky
Of flying fowl and earth of beast of prey.
It scorched the vulture's feathers with its blast,
Set earth a-blazing where its venom fell,
Dragged from the water gruesome crocodiles,
And swiftly flying eagles from the air.
Men and four-footed beasts ceased from the land;
The whole world gave it room.

I came. The dragon seemed a lofty mountain
And trailed upon the ground its hairs like lassos.
Its tongue was like a tree-trunk charred, its jaws
Were open and were lying in my path.
Its eyes were like two cisterns full of blood.
It bellowed when it saw me and came on.

When it closed

And pressed me hard I took mine ox-head mace
And in the strength of God, the Lord of all,
Urged on mine elephantine steed and smote
The dragon's head : thou wouldst have said that heaven
Rained mountains down thereon. I smashed the skull,
As it had been a mighty elephant's,
And venom poured forth like the river Nile.
So struck I that the dragon rose no more." ³³

All these details strikingly resemble the story of Srvara.

A son is born to Sam in his old age, but the white hair of the babe so disgusts the father that he commands the child to be carried to the famous mountain Alburz (Hara Berezaiti). There, fortunately, it is found by the Slmurgh, the mythical bird Saena, which we have described above and which takes care of the infant until he becomes a tall and sturdy youth.

In the meanwhile Sam regrets his fault, and being told in a dream where the child is, he goes to Mount Alburz and fetches home his son, to whom he gives the name of Zal. Zal falls in love with Rudabah, the daughter of the prince of Kabul, a descendant of Dahhak; but though the maid is fair and grace ful, the marriage is opposed first by her father and then by the Shah because she is of the race of the devilish King. This is the subject of a tale which Firdausi narrates with much talent, but it is no mythology, although the love for an Ahrimanian woman recalls the errors of Keresaspa. Finally, of course, every obstacle is removed, and Zal marries Rudabah.

Before long the princess is found to be pregnant, but no de liverance comes, and Rudabah suffers in vain. Then a thought occurs to Zal. On his departure from the nest where he had spent his infant years the Simurgh had given him one of its pinions as a talisman, bidding him burn the feather in case of misfortune, whereupon the bird would immediately come to his rescue. He did so, and the Simurgh, arriving instantly, told him that the birth would be no natural one. It bade him bring

"A blue-steel dagger, seek a cunning man,
Bemuse the lady first with wine to ease
Her pain and fear, then let him ply his craft
And take the Lion from its lair by piercing
Her waist while all unconscious, thus imbruing
Her side in blood, and then stitch up the gash.
Put trouble, care, and fear aside, and bruise
With milk and musk a herb that I will show thee
And dry them in the shade. Dress and anoint
Rudaba's wound and watch her come to life.
Rub o er the wound my plume, its gracious shade Will prove a blessing." ³⁴

The mandate of the Simurgh was scrupulously obeyed, and when Rudabah awoke and saw her babe, she joyously cried, "I am delivered" (birastam), which in Persian happens to be a pun on the name of the future hero, Rustam, the ancient form of which (if the word were extant) would be Raodhatakhma ("Strong in Growth"). ³⁵ When little more than a child the promising youth breaks the neck of an elephant with a single blow of his mace and with some companions takes possession of a stronghold on Mount Sipand. Henceforth Rustam will be the Roland or the Cid of the Persian epic and he puts his sword or rather his club at the disposal of all Iranian kings in succession. There are no traces of mythology in his adventures, which are of a warlike character par excellence, although occasionally they are at the same time romantic, as in the story of his son Suhrab, who was brought up among the Turanians, and whom his father killed in single combat, not knowing that he was his son. ³⁶ The feats performed by Rustam in the service of the Iranian kings against the Turanians are attributed in Pahlavi literature to the monarchs themselves, and it is evident that Rustam is a personality whose importance has been made much greater in compara tively recent times. He is the hero of Seistan and has clearly taken the place of Keresaspa and other Persian or Median heroes.

If Rustam is the Roland of Firdausi, Afrasiyab plays the part of the Emir Marsile, the chief of the Saracens in the French epic; he is the arch-unbeliever, the leader of the Turanian hordes.

In the Avesta he is known as Frangrasyan and has a much more mythical character than Rustam. Judging from the episode of his fight with Uzava, in which he is said to have detained the rivers so as to desolate Iran by drought, he be longed originally to a rain-myth. Ancient legend says that he lived in a stronghold (hankana) in the depths of the earth, where he offered an unsuccessful sacrifice to Ardvi Sura Anahita in the desire of seizing the kingly Glory of the Aryans which had departed from Yima and, escaping Azhi Dahaka, had taken refuge in the midst of the sea Vourukasha. ³⁷

The treacherous Turanian king tried to seize it, but though he stripped himself naked and swam to catch it, the Glory fled away, and an arm of the sea, called lake Haosravah, resulted from the movement of the water. Twice again he renewed his effort, but each time a new gulf was formed, and all was in vain. Then the crafty Turanian rushed out of the sea, with evil words on his lips, uttering a curse and saying: "I have not conquered that Glory of the Aryan lands, born and unborn, and of righteous Zarathushtra.

Both will I confound together,
All things that are dry and fluid,
Both great and good and beautiful;
Sore distressed, Ahura Mazda
Formeth creatures that oppose him."

Thus, according to this legend, he became a maleficent fiend, a drought-demon, who was made prisoner by Haoma and finally killed by Haosravah. ³⁸ All these elements are preserved in Firdausi's legend, but the story has become a regular conflict between two nations or, at least, between two dynasties. This warfare is the kernel of the Iranian epic material, the struggle being divided into several episodes.

The first is the defeat of Naotara (Persian Naudhar), a son of Manushcithra (Persian Minucihr). Although Firdausi places the event after Minucihr's death, the older tradition³⁹ connects the facts with the reign of the latter king. The Iranians are made prisoners in the mountains of Padashkhvargar (Tabaristan), but though Afrasiyab afflicts them with starvation and disease, his brother Aghraeratha (Persian Ighrirath) sympathizes with the captives and releases them, whereupon Afrasiyab, in anger, kills his brother. Aghraeratha, although living among unbelievers, was a pious man, and after his death was placed among the immortals. Under the name of Gopatshah ⁴⁰ he dwells in the region of Saukavastan, near Airyana Vaejah, his form being that of a bull from his feet to his waist and of a man from his waist to his head. His home is on the sea-shore, where he continually pours holy water into the sea for the worship of God. Thus he kills innumerable noxious creatures, but if he should cease doing so, all those maleficent beings would fall on earth with the rain.⁴¹

The second episode is the battle between Afrasiyab and Uzava Tumaspana (Persian Zav), this hero being a nephew of Naotara, and his mother being the daughter of Afrasiyab's sorcerer. Afrasiyab had invaded Iran, stopped the course of all the rivers, and by his witchcraft prevented rain from fall ing, thus producing drought and starvation; 42 but Uzava, who, though a child, had the maturity and the strength of an adult, ⁴³ frightened the sorcerers and their chief and caused rain to fall. In two myths, therefore, Afrasiyab inflicts starvation on the Iranians, and in the latter he does it by withholding the rain, so that his original nature as a rain-demon is scarcely open to question.

The third invasion is connected with the name of Kavi Kavata (Persian Kai Qubad), the first king of the dynasty of the Kaianians. In India the word kavi means "a sage," a respectable person in ancient days; in Iran it was applied to princes in olden times, and since those rulers originally were not Zoroastrians, kavi (Persian kai) in the Avesta often has the signification of "unbeliever," though this pejorative sense does not apply to the group of legendary kings who are regularly provided with that epithet and who, therefore, are called Kaianians. Like Zal, Kai Qubad is said to have been abandoned on Mount Alburz at his birth, and there, protected only by a waist-cloth, he was freezing near a river when Zav perceived him and saved his life. ⁴⁴ He remained on Alburz until, Zav and his successor being dead, the Iranian throne was vacant; but meanwhile Afrasiyab had again invaded the country. Thereupon Zal sent his son Rustam to Mount Alburz to fetch Qubad and to make him the sovereign of all Iranian tribes; and then it was that Rustam, who had received Sam's club (i. e. the mace of Keresaspa), began to distinguish him self and to beat back the invaders.

The successor of Kavi Kavata is Kavi Usan (Persian Kai Kaus), whose name has been compared with that of an ancient seer who is known as Kavya Usanas in the Vedas, where he is renowned for his wisdom. There he is said to have driven the cows on the path of the sun and to have fashioned for Indra the thunderbolt with which the god slew Vrtra. The identification is not quite certain, however, because the character of Usan is completely altered in Iran into that of an ordinary king, although a trace of his quality of driver of cows may perhaps survive in the legend of his wonderful ox, to whose judge ment all disputes were referred as to the boundary between Iran and Turan. ⁴⁵ Yet Kai Kaus was not really wise, for he was, at least according to Firdausi, an imperfect character, easily led astray by passion. ⁴⁶ Legend has transferred wisdom to his minister Aoshnara, whose epithet is pouru-jira, "very intelligent." ⁴⁷ While yet in his mother's womb, he taught many a marvel and at his birth he was able to confound Angra Mainyu by answering all the questions and riddles of Fracih, the unbeliever. ⁴⁸ This story is a replica of the legend of Yoishta, a member of the virtuous Turanian family of the Fryanas, ⁴⁹ who preserved his town from the devastations of the ruffian Akhtya by resolving the ninety-nine riddles asked by that malicious spirit and by confounding the fiend with three other enigmas which he was unable to answer, ⁵⁰ a tradition which reminds us of the legend of QEdipus. Aoshnara became the administrator of Usan's kingdom and taught many invaluable things to mankind, but unfortunately the inconstant monarch at last became tired of his minister's wisdom and put him to death.

Kai Kaus was not only inconstant but presumptuous, for he ascended Mount Alburz, where he built himself seven dwellings, one of gold, two of silver, two of steel, and two of crystal. He then endeavoured to restrain the Mazainyan daevas, or demons of Mazandaran, only to be led into a trap by one of these evil beings who tempted him by making him discontented with his earthly sovereignty and by flattering him so as to induce him to aim at the sovereignty of the heavenly regions. Yielding to the tempter, he sought to reach the skies by means of a car supported by four eagles, and he also began to display insolence toward the sacred beings to such a degree that he lost his Glory. His troops were then defeated, and he was compelled to flee to the Vourukasha, where Nairyosangha, the messenger of Ahura Mazda, was about to slay him when the Fravashi of Haosravah, yet unborn, implored that his grandfather might be spared on account of the virtues of the grandson. ⁵¹

During this expedition or during one to Hamavaran, which is only a duplicate of the other the land of Iran, being abandoned by its ruler, was laid desolate by a fiend called Zainigav, who had come from Arabia and in whose eye was such venom that he killed any man on whom he gazed. So dire was the calamity that the Iranians called their enemy Afrasiyab into their country to rid them of Zainigav, and for that task the Turanian received the kingly Glory which had abandoned the frivolous king Kai Kaus. Afrasiyab, however, abused his power, and the Iranians had once more to be saved by Rustam, who released Kai Kails and expelled the Turanians.

Kai Kaus had married a Turanian woman named Sudabah, a vicious creature who made shameful propositions to Syavarshan (Persian Kai Siyavakhsh), who was the son of a previous wife of her husband and a superb youth. Since, however, the pious young man rejected her love, she calumniated him to Kai Kaus, so that Syavarshan had to flee to Afrasiyab, who received him well and even gave him his daughter in marriage; but the honour with which he was welcomed roused the jealousy of Keresavazdah (Persian Garsivaz), the brother of Afrasiyab, who by false accusations persuaded the king to put Siyavakhsh to death.

To avenge this deed was the life-task of his son Haosravah (Persian Kai Khusrau), the greatest king of the Kaianian dynasty. His name means "of good renown, glorious," and perhaps he was originally the same person as the Vedic hero Susravas, who helped Indra to crush twenty warriors mounted on chariots.⁵² It is, indeed, a striking coincidence that in the Avesta the gallant Haosravah, who united the Aryan nations into one kingdom, begs of Ardvi Sura as a boon, not only that he may become the sovereign lord of all countries, but also

"That of all the yoked horses
I may drive my steeds the foremost
O er the long length of the racecourse;
That we break not through the pitfall
Which the foe, with treacherous purpose,
Plots against me while on horseback."⁵³

The war waged by Haosravah against Afrasiyab is a long one, full of incidents of a fine epic character as we find them in the Shdhndmah, but all this has been grafted on the old legend of Frangrasyan's death, which originally was in close connexion with the story of the vain attempts of the impious king to seize the Glory of the Aryan monarchs. As we have already seen, Frangrasyan, enraged by his failure, was swearing, cursing, and blaspheming in his subterranean abode; but at that very moment he was overheard by Haoma (probably the "White Haoma," the tree of all remedies, which grows in the sea Vourukasha), who managed to fetter the Turanian murderer and to drag him bound to King Haosravah.

" Kavi Haosravah then slew him
Within sight of Lake Caecasta,
Deep and with wide spreading waters,
Thus avenging the foul murder
Of his father, brave Syavarshan." ⁵⁴

In this contest, being helped by the fire of warriors that was burning on his horse's mane, so that he could see in the subterranean darkness where the Turanian was living and where he had his idols, ⁵⁵ Haosravah destroyed everything and then established the fire on Mount Asnavand. The intervention of Haoma (the drink of the gods when they fight the demons), and the presence of a supernatural fire, of the white steed, and of the cavern, as well as the location of the contest on a lake, point to some natural myth as the origin of the story, though it is too adulterated to admit of any convincing inter pretation. Firdausi, of course, introduces still more profound alterations. Instead of being in his own subterranean palace, Afrasiyab is supposed to have taken refuge in a cavern after having been completely beaten by Kai Khusrau and having taken to flight, while Haoma has become the hermit Hum, who overhears him bewailing his defeat and tries to capture the fugitive, who escapes by plunging into the lake. Kai Khusrau is called immediately and seizes Garsivaz (Keresavazdah), the murderer of Siyavakhsh. To compel Afrasiyab to emerge from his retreat his beloved brother Garsivaz is tortured, and finally both brothers are put to death. ⁵⁶

Having achieved the greatest exploit of the epic and having avenged his father, Haosravah fears that he may lapse into pride and meet the same end as Yima. He becomes melancholy, resolves to resign the throne to Aurvat-aspa (Persian Luhrasp), and finally rides with his paladins into the mountains, where he disappears. A few knights follow him till the end, but are lost in the snow, so that he alone, guided by Sraosha, arrives alive in heaven, where, in a secret place and adorned with a halo of glory, he sits on a throne until the renovation of the world. ⁵⁷

This very noteworthy legend of the retirement of the mighty king and warrior has been compared by Darmesteter ⁵⁸ with an episode of the Mahdbhdrata, the great Indian epic, where the hero Yudhisthira, weary of the world, designated his suc cessors and with his four brothers set out on a journey north ward toward the mountains and the deserts of Himavant (the Himalayas). One after the other all his companions expired exhausted on the way, but he with his faithful dog, who was Dharma ("Righteousness") in disguise, entered heaven, not having tasted death. Unless the story has been borrowed from the Indians, it is Indo-Iranian, the latter explanation being the more probable since the immortality of Haosravah is already known in the Avesta.⁵⁹

Among the companions of Haosravah who died on the way were Giv, son of Gudarz, both gallant heroes who played an important part in the war against Afrasiyab, and Tus, son of Naotara (Persian Naudhar), the last monarch of the Pishdadian dynasty. He had been barred from his realm by the accession of the Kaianian kings because he was too frivolous, but after having been the competitor of Haosravah, he became his friend. An epic of Naotara s sons seems to have existed in which Tus was the conqueror of the sons of Vaesaka (Persian Visah), the uncle of Afrasiyab, for he is said to have besieged them in the pass of Khshathro-Suka on the top of the holy and lofty Mount Kangha; ⁶⁰ and as a reward for his exploits and after his death he will be among the thirty who will help Saoshyant at the end of the world. ⁶¹

His brother Vistauru ("Opposed to Sinners" ⁶¹ ) is famed for having obtained from Ardvi Sura, when he was pursuing idolators, the power to cross the River Vitanguhaiti.

" This is true, in sooth veracious,
Ardvi Sura Anahita,
that as many demon-worshippers have been slain by me as I have hairs on my head. Therefore do thou, Ardvi Sura Anahita, provide me a dry crossing ⁶³
O er the good Vitanguhaiti. Ardvi Sura Anahita hastened down
With a lovely maiden's body,
Very strong, of goodly figure,
Girded high and standing upright,
Nobly born, of brilliant lineage,
Wearing golden foot-gear shining
And bedecked with all adornment.
Certain waters made she stand still,
Others caused she to flow forward,
And a crossing dry provided
O er the good Vitanguhaiti." ⁶⁴

After the reign of Kai Khusrau the scene of Firdausi's epic shifts toward Balkh in Bactria, and the military character of the poem yields to more religious interests. We have, indeed, arrived at the point where legends, which are for the most part of a mythical character, are brought into connexion with traditions concerning the origins of the Zoroastrian religion, of Zoroaster himself, and of the persons around him.

In Firdausi's view the successor of Kai Khusrau is Luhrasp, the Aurvat-aspa of the Avesta, who is renowned only as the father of Vishtaspa, the first Zoroastrian king, and of Zairivairi ("Golden-Breastplated"; Persian Zarir). The deeds of the latter are of much the same kind as those of other Iranian heroes. He is a slayer of Turanians, and near the river Daitya he killed Humayaka, a demon-worshipper who had long claws and lived in eight caverns, and he also did to death the wicked Arejat-aspa, 65 but was treacherously assassinated by the wizard Vidrafsh and avenged by his son Bastvar. ⁶⁶ All this savours pretty much of a combat with dragons.

In the Greek author Athenaeus ⁶⁷ Zairivairi appears under the name Zariadres and is said to be a son of Adonis and Aphro dite. This is a truly mythic genealogy, for Aphrodite is the usual Greek translation of Anahita, the goddess of the waters, and her most natural lover is Apam Napat, "the Child of the Waters," whose name the Greek writer here renders by Adonis, the habitual paramour of Aphrodite. A very frequent epithet of Apam Napat is aurvat-aspa ("with swift steeds"), which is precisely the name of Zairivairi's father. Accordingly, Darmesteter thinks ⁶⁸ that Zairivairi is a mythical being and extends the conclusion to his brother Vishtaspa and even to the prophet Zarathushtra.

This opinion is rejected by Orientalists of the present day, who, not without reason, think that Zarathushtra actually existed; but nevertheless it is possible that Zairivairi has been introduced into Vishtaspa's family by a contamination of legends or by a similarity of names, such as has produced many errors concerning Vishtaspa himself. Zairivairi is the hero of a romantic adventure, which is attributed to his brother Gushtasp (Vishtaspa) in the Shdhnamah. He was the handsomest man of his time, just as Odatis, the daughter of King Omartes, was the most beautiful woman among the Ira nians. They saw one another in a dream and fell in love, but when the princess was invited to a great feast at which she had to make her choice and throw a goblet to the young noble who pleased her, she did not see Zairivairi. Leaving the room in tears, she perceived a man in Scythian attire at the door of the palace and recognized the hero of her dream. It was Zairi vairi, who had come in haste, knowing the intentions of Omartes, and the lovers fled together. ⁷⁰

Vishtaspa himself is known for heroic exploits. He defeated some unbelievers, like Tathryavant, Peshana, and Arejataspa (Persian Arjasp), king of the Hyaonians, although it is difficult to say whether these are more or less historical facts in connexion with the protector of Zoroaster or are mythical exploits attributed to some other Vishtaspa who became iden tified with the prophet's patron. The old tradition concerning the latter reports that he was the husband of Hutaosa, a name which is the same as that of Darius's wife Atossa. He had in his possession the Iranian Glory, which he is said to have taken to Mount Roshan, where it still is ; and he was converted to the new faith after having imprisoned Zoroaster, who had been falsely accused by priests of the old religion, but had proved his innocence by miraculously curing the favourite horse of the king. ⁷¹ In Vishtaspa's court was the important family of the Hvogvas, containing Jamaspa, the minister of Vishtaspa, who became the husband of Zoroaster's daughter Pourucista and who was one of the prophet's first protectors; while his brother Frashaoshtra was the father-in-law of Zoroaster through the latter's marriage to Hvovi.

Zoroaster (Zarathushtra), of the Spitama family, was the son of Pourushaspa, who is said to have been the fourth priest of Haoma, ⁷² but we know very little about him from the Avesta itself. Later literature, on the other hand, concocted a life of Zoroaster which is full of marvels and in which the prophet is in continual intercourse with Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas, achieving all manner of prodigious deeds. These legends appear comparatively late in Mazdeism, centuries after Zoroaster's life, and probably contain very few historical elements, although they have accumulated stories borrowed from various sources and even include pious forgeries.

The Avesta knows of an intervention of divine beings only at Zoroaster's birth. A plant of haoma contained the prophet's Fravashi, or pre-created soul, which Pourushaspa, the father of Zoroaster and a priest of Haoma, happened to absorb. He married Dughdhova, who had received the khvarenanh which has been so frequently mentioned, and thus the Glory of Yima himself was transferred to Zoroaster. The daevas repeatedly sought to kill the prophet both before and after his birth, and the adorers of idols persecuted him, but in vain. Ahura Mazda then entered into communion with him and revealed the religion to him. For ten years he had only one disciple, his cousin Maidhyoi-maongha, but at last he won converts in Vishtaspa's court among the members of the Hvogva family, the king him self becoming a believer through the insistence of his wife Hutaosa. A long war followed between Vishtaspa and Arejataspa, king of the Hyaonians, who was determined to suppress Zoroastrianism, and though the prophet s brothers Zairivairi (Persian Zarir) and Spentodata (Persian Isfandyar) fought gallantly, Zoroaster was slain by the Turanian Bratro-resh, one of the karapans (idolatrous priests) who had tried to kill him at his birth.

Zoroaster has left three germs in this world, and they are like three flames which Nairyosangha, the messenger of the gods and a form of Agni, ⁷³ has deposited in Lake Kasu (the Hamun Swamp in Seistan), where they are watched by ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine Fravashis. Near that lake is a mountain inhabited by faithful Zoroastrians, and once in each millennium a maiden, bathing in the waters, will receive one of those germs. Thus three prophets (Saoshyants, "They Who Will Advantage") will be born in succes sion: first Ukhshyat-ereta (Hushetar), then Ukhshyat-nemah (Hushetar-mah), and finally Astvat-ereta, the Saoshyant parexcellence. They will reveal themselves in periods when evil will be prevalent and will put an end to wickedness. The last Saoshyant will come when Dahhak will have desolated the world after having broken his fetters on Mount Damavand; but Keresaspa, as we have seen, 74 will slay him at the very instant when Saoshyant appears with the kingly Glory (Khvarenanh), and when he will definitely conquer the Druj (the principle of falsehood), Angra Mainyu, and the evil creation.

NOTES

1. Shdhndmah, i. 147.

2. Shdhndmah, i. 15455.

3. Shdhndmah, i. 145.

4. On his way to Dahhak's capital, Gang-i-Dizhhukht (which Firdausi identifies with Jerusalem) Faridun was checked for an in stant by a river, and a curious legend preserved in the Avesta (Yasht, v. 61-65) is related to the episode. Since the ferryman Paurva was unwilling to row him across, he, having a complete knowledge of magic, assumed the shape of a vulture and flung the man high in air, so that for three days he went flying toward his house, but could not turn downward. When the beneficent dawn came at the end of the third night, Paurva prayed to Ardvi Sura Anahita, who hastened to his rescue, seized him by the arm, and brought him safely home.

5. Shdhndmah, i. 146.

6. Skdhnamah, i. 162.

7. Shdhndmah, i. 167.

8. VIII. xiii. 9 (tr. E. W. West, in SBE xxxvii. 28).

9. Bundahish, xxxi. 10.

10. Yasht, xix. 38-44 (cf. Yasna, ix. n, Yasht, v. 38, xv. 28).

11. Yasht, xiii. 136.

12. Yasna, ix. n = Yasht, xix. 40, Pahlavi Rivdyat, tr. E. W. West, in S# xviii. 374.

13. The metre of the original shows that Keresaspa is to be pro nounced Krsa-aspa.

14. Supra, pp. 58-59, 94-95, 143-

15. The author is not convinced by the arguments advanced by G. Hiising (Die traditionelle Ueberlieferung und das arische System, pp. 135-39) to prove that Gandarewa was originally a bird.

16. Yasht, xix. 41, Pahlavi Rivdyat, tr. E. W. West, in SBE xviii.

375-

17. Heaven.

18. Yasht, xix. 43-44. The metre of the original is not wholly correct.

19. Yasht, xv. 28, xix. 41.

20. Pahlavi Rivdyat (tr. E. W. West, in SBE xviii. 376).

21. E. W. West, in SBE xviii. 378, note i.

22. Mainbg-l-Khrat, xxvii. 50.

23. Pahlavi Rivdyat (tr. E. W. West, in SBE xviii. 376-77).

24. Yasht, xix. 41, Vendlddd, i. 9.

25. Bundahish) xxix. 7.

26. Yasht, xiii. 61.

27. Pahlavi Rivdyat (tr. E. W. West, in SBE xviii. 373-80).

28. Shdhndmah, i. 174.

29. Yasht, xiii. 131.

30. Bundahish, xii. 10.

31. Bundahish, xxxi. 21-22.

32. A Persian weight of widely varying values.

33. Shdhndmah, i. 291, 296-97.

34. Shdhndmah, i. 320-22.

35. On the story of Rustam cf. G. Hiising, Beitrdge zur Rustamsage, Leipzig, 1913.

36. Shahnamah, ii. 119-87; for the motif in saga-cycles see M. A. Potter, Sohrab and Rustam: The Epic Theme of a Combat between Father and Son, London, 1902.

37. Yasht, v. 41-43.

38. Yasna, xi. 7; Yasht, ix. 18-22, xix. 56-64.

39. Bundahish, xxxi. 21; J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, ii. 400.

40. Bundahish, xxix. 5.

41. Mainog-i-Khrat, Ixii. 31-36. This seems to be a reminiscence of the man-headed bulls in Babylonian art (L. C. Casartelli, Phi losophy of the Mazdayasnian Religion under the Sassanids, 182).

42. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, ii. 400.

43. Dinkart, VII. i. 31 (tr. E. W. West, in SEE xlvii. 1-12).

44. Bundahish, xxxi. 24.

45. Dinkart, VII. ii. 62-63 (tr. E. W. West, in SBE xlvii. 31-32).

46. Shdhndmah, ii. 26.

47. Yasht, xiii. 131; Afrin-i-Zartusht, 2.

48. Dinkart, VII. i. 36 (tr. E. W. West, in SBE xlvii. 13).

49. Yasna, xlvi. 12; Yasht, v. 81-83.

50. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, ii. 386; cf. the Pahlavi text as ed. and tr. by E. W. West, in The Book of Arda Firaf, Bombay, 1872.

51. Dinkart, IX. xxii. 4-12 (tr. E. W. West, in SBE xxxvii. 220- 23).

52. A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, Strassburg, 1897, p. 64.

53. Yasht, v. 50.

54. Yasht, ix. 17-18. Haosravah and Caecasta are trisyllabic.

55. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, i. 154.

56. Shdhndmah, iv. 26469.

57. Dinkart, VII. i. 40 (tr. E. W. West, in SBE xlvii. 14).

58. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, ii. 661, note 29; see also supra, pp. 149-50-

59. Afrin-i-Zartusht, 7.

60. Yasht, v. 54.

61. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, ii. 380.

62. C. Bartholomae, Altiranisches Worterbuch, col. 1459.

63. The prose line dat me turn ar^dvi sure andhite hush(k]sm psshum raecaya should probably read,

dat hush(k)m pzshum raecaya arddvl sure andhite
(" So a crossing dry provide thou, Ardvl Sura Anahita").

64. Yasht, v. 77-78.

65. Yasht, v. 113.

66. J. Darmesteter, Etudes iraniennes, ii. 230. The chief Pahlavi source for Zairivairi, the Ydtkar-i-Zariran, has been edited by Jamaspji Minocheherji Jamasp-Asana (Bombay, 1897) and translated by Jivanji Jamshedji Modi (Bombay, 1899).

67. Deipnosophistae, xiii. 35 (p. 575).

68. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, iii. p. Ixxxii.

69. Shdhndmah, iv. 318 ff.

70. J. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, iii. p. Ixxxi; cf. E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1900, pp. 47~55-

71. F. Rosenberg, Le Lime de Zoroastre (Zardtusht Ndma}, pp. 47

55-

72. Yasna, ix. 13.

73. See supra, pp. 44, 284-85.

74. See supra, pp. 327-28.

CHAPTER VI. THE LIFE TO COME

THE account of the Saoshyants, the future sons of Zoroaster, brings us to the theme of Iranian eschatology. Like Odysseus in Greece, or Dante in the Divina Commedia¹ Arta Viraf, a wise and virtuous Mazdean, is supposed in a late Pahlavi book to have visited the other world, and it will be interesting to follow him in his journey to see what were the Mazdean conceptions of heaven and of hell.

When the soul of Viraf went forth from its body, the first thing which it beheld was the Cinvat Bridge (the bridge of "the Divider") which all souls must cross before they pass to the future world. There he saw before him a damsel of beautiful appearance, full-bosomed, charming to heart and soul; and when he asked her, "Who art thou? and what person art thou? than whom, in the world of the living, any damsel more elegant, and of more beautiful body than thine, was never seen by me," she replied that she was his own religion (daena) and his own deeds " it is on account of thy will and actions, that I am as great and good and sweet-scented and triumphant and undistressed as appears to thee." Then the Cinvat Bridge became wider, and with the assistance of Sraosha ("Obedience to the Law") and Atar ("Fire") Viraf could easily cross. Both Yazatas promised to show him heaven and hell, but before entering the kingdom of the blest, he had to pass through Hamistakan, the resting-place of those whose good works and sins exactly counterbalance. There they await the renovation of the world, their only sufferings being from cold and heat.

Passing from Hamistakan, Viraf ascended the three steps of "good thought, good word, good deed," which are the abodes of the souls of those who did not practise the specific Mazdean virtues, although they were righteous men. These steps lead to Garotman (A vesta Garo Nmana, "House of Praise"), and there dwell the souls of men who constantly practised the Zoroastrian precepts: the liberal, who walk adorned in all splendour; those who chanted the Gatads (the "Hymns" of Zoroaster), in gold-embroidered raiment; those who contracted next-of-kin marriages, ² illuminated by radiance from above; those who killed noxious creatures; the agriculturists; the shepherds. All of them are brilliant and walk about in great pleasure and joy. Then the pilgrims came to a river which souls were endeavouring to cross, some being able to do this easily, and others failing utterly. In reply to Viraf's questions Atar explained that the river came from the tears which men shed from their eyes in unlawful lamentation for the departed, and that those who could not cross were the souls for whom their relatives made an exaggerated and irreligious display of grief. Atar also showed a lake whose water was the sap of wood which had been placed on the sacred fire without being quite dry.

Returning to the Cinvat Bridge, Viraf and his guides followed the soul of a wicked man, just arrived from earth. In its first night of hell it must endure as much misfortune as a man can bear in a whole unhappy life. A dry and stinking cold wind comes to meet that man, and he sees his vile life under the shape of a profligate woman, naked, decayed, gaping, and bandy-legged. Descending the three steps of "evil thought, evil word, evil deed," the soul of the wicked arrives at the greedy jaws of hell, which is a most frightful pit, where the darkness is so thick that the hand can grasp it, and where the stench makes every one stagger and fall. Each of the damned thinks, "I am alone," and when three days and three nights have elapsed, he wails, "The nine thousand years are completed, and they will not release me!" Everywhere are noxious creatures, the smallest of them as high as mountains, and they tear and worry the souls of the wicked as a dog does a bone.

For special crimes there are special punishments. The woman who has been unfaithful to her husband is suspended by her breasts, and scorpions seize her whole body, the same creatures biting the feet of those who have polluted the earth by walking without shoes. The woman who has insulted her husband is suspended by her tongue. A wicked king must hang in space, flogged by fifty demons. The man who has killed cattle unlawfully suffers in his limbs, which are broken and separated from one another. The miser is stretched upon a rack, and a thousand demons trample him. The liar sees his tongue gnawed by worms. The unjust man who did not pay the salary of his workmen is doomed to eat human flesh. The woman who has slain her own child must dig into a hill with her breasts and hold a millstone on her head. The bodies of impostors and deceivers fall in rottenness. The man who has removed the boundary stones of others so as to make his own fields larger must dig into a hill with his fingers and nails. The breaker of promises and contracts, whether with the pious or with the wicked since Mithra is both for the faithful and the un believers is tortured by pricking spurs and arrows. Under the Cinvat Bridge there is an abyss for the most heinous sinners, this pit being so deep and so stinking that if all the wood of the earth were burned in it, it would not even emit a perceptible smell. There the souls of the wicked stand, as close as the ear to the eye, and as many as the hairs on the mane of a horse, and they also are submitted to various torments according to their different offences. At the very bottom of the abyss is Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), the Evil Spirit, who ridicules and mocks the wicked in hell, saying, "Why did you ever eat the bread of Ahura Mazda, and do my work? and thought not of your own creator, but practised my will?"

It would be interesting to know how much in Arta Viraf's visions was influenced by the conceptions of other religions, including Judaism and Christianity. That the Semites in fluenced Iranian thought in some measure is obvious the myth of the attempt of Kai Kaus to fly to heaven, for instance, shows a remarkable parallelism to the Babylonian story of Etana, who sought to ascend on an eagle'ss back to the sky that he might secure the plant of life." ³ The close association of Jews and Persians in the Exilic and post-Exilic periods seems to have caused some interchange of religious concepts, though the precise degree of this influence is still subjudice. ⁴

NOTES

1. Cf. also E. J. Becker, A Contribution to the Comparative Study of the Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell, Baltimore, 1899.

2. Cf. L. H. Gray, "Marriage (Iranian)," in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, viii. 456-59, Edinburgh, 1916.

3. See supra, pp. 283, 336.

4. Cf. the literature cited in the Bibliography (V), p. 402.

CHAPTER VII. CONCLUSION

THE special interest presented to the mythologist by the study of Iranian myths lies in the fact that they show with ideal clearness the various stages in the evolution of myth toward historical legend.

As is well known, a myth originally is an effort toward accounting for some phenomenon. The attempt is made, of course, with the mental tendencies of people of a fairly elementary culture, but it is clear enough that primitive man does not only aim at giving an explanation, but at making it picturesque and appealing to his imagination; and it is equally obvious that he desires to stimulate the fancy of his fellow men by using symbols, testing their ingenuity by transferring one order of facts to another. This tendency generates parable, moral fiction, and riddle, and it is difficult to doubt that myth is one more aspect of that same turn of mind when we compare old riddles with old myths.

Otto Schrader has collected l several Indo-European riddles that are very instructive in this regard, and an episode of the Shdhndmah also illustrates this explanation of myth. Thus, in Firdausi's epic Minucihr tests Zal by hard questions, concocted by the shrewd priests, who formulate a series of riddles that are very much of the same kind as those which are found among people of primitive culture and which Schrader considers to be a source of myths. Zal is asked what are a dozen cypresses with thirty boughs on each, and he finds them to be the twelve moons of every year, each moon having thirty days. Two horses, one white and one black, moving rapidly to catch each other, but in vain, prove to be day and night. A lofty pair of cypresses in which a bird nests, on the one at morning and on the other at evening, represents the two portions of the sky, and the bird which flies between them is the sun. The turn of mind which generated such stories would readily produce myths.

In the Rgveda, where we have found so many names of gods and heroes of Iranian mythology, mythical symbolism is rife and in full operation. Not only does the singer in his prayers remind his god of the myths that are current about him, but he makes new ones and gives another turn to mythical interpre tations of facts because he is conscious that they are myths. For that reason the Rgveda makes us live in an atmosphere that is truly mythic, but, on the other hand, it presents such a free treatment of the various stories that it is much more difficult to give a clear account of the old Indian myths than of the Iranian legends. Vedic mythology is more fluid; the singer deals freely with the stories, mixes them, makes new combina tions with the traditional elements, and even goes so far as to invent myths which are entirely new.

If we compare the Iranian situation with the Vedic, which, of course, at one time was the Indo-Iranian status, we observe that the Mazdean Iranians have plenty of myths, but that, to a great extent, the creative tendency has been checked. Their myths appear rather as survivals of prior times, and, conse quently, they are more clearly delineated than in the Veda. In addition to this, they have been systematized according to the general tendency of Mazdeism, and the necessity of fitting them into the dualistic scheme accounts for the monotonous character of these myths, in which a good being is always at war with some evil one. The good beings are pretty much identical with one another, and the fiends are almost the same throughout. A sure proof that the real meaning of the myths has faded is the great number of epithets and details that are quite clear in the original form of the story, but are often mean ingless and merely traditional in Mazdean lore.

The special evolution of myths in Iran assumes three forms.

(a) The myth, being no longer understood as such, becomes a mere tale and, as is the case with tales, is apt to be subdivided into several stories or to be reproduced many times with different names. This has especially been the case with the storm-myth. The dragon is Azhi, Srvara, Zainigav, Apaosha, Gandarewa, etc.; the youthful and godlike victor is Thraetaona, Keresaspa, Raodhatakhma (Rustam), Haosravah, etc.

Myths are duplicated. Besides Yima-Yimak, we find Mashya-Mashyoi. Kavi Usan is twice a prisoner; Kavi Keresavazdah has been calumniated twice; Urupi and Keres aspa both ride on a demon; Kavi Kavata and Zal are both abandoned on Mount Alburz at their birth; Thraetaona and Vistauru both cross a river in a miraculous way; Yoishta and Aoshnara both answer the riddles of a sphinx. All heroes marry Turanian girls, and all stories take place on Mount Hara Berezaiti (Alburz) or in the sea Vourukasha, etc., etc.

(b) On the other hand, several myths coalesce into one story, the most complete instance being the legend of Yima, which unites a story of primeval twins, a winter-myth, a myth comparing sunset to the death of man, a story of women captured by a fiend, etc.

(c) There is a gradual anthropomorphization of the myths. On the one hand, the mythical contest is changed into a moral one, the cloud-dragons, imprisoners of water, becoming heretics or enemies of the Zoroastrian religion. A curious instance of this is Faridun's conversion of JamshkTs daughters, who had been brought up in vice and pagan lore by Dahhak, this being a transformation of the traditional story of the storm-god releasing the women of the cloud, i.e. the imprisoned waters. In Yima's story a moral motive has been introduced into the darkening of the sun by the cloud-dragon.

On the other hand, the mythical material becomes historical or, at least, epic. Monsters, dragons, etc., become Turanians, and the gods are transformed into kings of a purely human char acter, so that in many cases in the Shdhndmah it is impossible to determine whether we are dealing with some historical event, more or less embellished by legend, or with a nature-myth that has been humanized. Dahhak is an Arabian king; Faridun is an audacious soldier; haoma, the draught of im mortality, becomes a hermit in the story of Afrasiyab, etc.

In the legend of Yima we see all successive stages. First we have the setting sun, and then the setting sun, showing the path to the departed, becomes their sire, and his solar quality fades away. He is thus evolved into the first mortal or the king of the dead, and finally becomes an ordinary Iranian monarch of ancient times.

This transformation has, it is true, deprived the Iranians of the great source of Indian poetry, but has resulted, on the other hand, in providing them with a rich epic material, the direction in which their literature has been developed. They were also creative in this domain, for they wove many legends around their real kings, their prophet, etc. Both sources of inspiration have been so blended that in the Shdhndmah Rustam's mace, which was originally the thunderbolt of Indra, is swung against the castellan bishops of the Syrian Church, and that Zairivairi, a son of Apam Napat, is the lover of the daughter of the Emperor of Byzantium.