[293] 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 thousand 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, [294] 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 conception. 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 [295] 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 [296] deeds of Mashya and Mashyoi. In their rivas-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 hundred 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 [297] 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 entertain 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 tenderness for their infants that the mother devoured one and the father one; wherefore Ahura Mazda, seeing this, took tenderness 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 [298] 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 increase 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 Siyakmak, 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 [299] 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 Gayomart 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 paradhata (Pahlavi peskdat), or "first law-giver." He is the Numa of the Iranians, the first organizer of the Iranian 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 [page 300] 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.
[301] "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 [302] 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 ("bull's 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.
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.
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