page_title: Indo-European cosmogony
section_title: Iranian
hierarchical_section_title: Indo-European cosmogony / Evidence / Mythological / Iranian
caption_attribution_description: فارسی: نگاره جمشید در شاهنامه تهماسبی English: Painting of Jamshid in The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp
context_page_description: The Indo-European cosmogony refers to the reconstructed cosmogony of the Proto-Indo-European mythology.
  The comparative analysis of different Indo-European tales has led scholars to reconstruct an original Proto-Indo-European creation myth involving twin brothers, *Manu- and *Yemo-, as the progenitors of the world and mankind, and a hero named *Trito who ensured the continuity of the original sacrifice.
  Although some thematic parallels can be made with Ancient Near East, and even Polynesian or South American legends, the linguistic correspondences found in descendant cognates of *Manu and *Yemo make it very likely that the myth discussed here has a Proto-Indo-European origin.
context_section_description: After a religious transformation led by Zarathustra around the 7th–6th centuries BC that degraded the status of prior myths and deities, *Manuš was replaced in the Iranian tradition with three different figures: Ahriman, who took his role as first sacrificer; Manūščihr ("son" or "seed of Manuš"), who replaced him as ancestor of the priestly line; and Zarathustra himself, who took his role as priest par excellence. Manūščihr is described in the Greater Bun-dahišnīh as the ancestor of all Mōpats ("High Priests") of Pars, and it has been proposed that *Manuš was originally regarded as the First Priest among pre-Zoroastrian tribes.
  In pre-Zoroastrian Iran, Yima was seen as the first king and first mortal. The original myth of creation was indeed condemned by Zarathustra, who makes mention of it in the Avesta as the two spirits that "appeared in the beginning as two twins in a dream ... (and) who first met and instituted life and non-life". Yima in particular is depicted as the first to distribute portions of the cow for consumption, and therefore explicitly condemned for having introduced the eating of meat. After a brief reign on earth, the king Yima was said in a later tradition to be deprived of his triple royal nimbus, which embodied the three social classes in Iranian myths. Mithra receives the part of the Priest, Thraētona that of the Warrior, and Kərəsāspa that of the Commoner. The saga ends with the real dismemberment of Yima by his own brother, the daiwic figure Spityura. In another myth of the Younger Avesta, the primal man Gayōmart (Gaya marətan; "Mortal Life") and the primeval world ox Gōšūrvan are sacrificed by the destructive spirit Ahriman (Aŋra Mainyu, "Evil Spirit"). From the ox's parts came all plants and animals, and from Gayōmart's body the minerals and humankind. In the Vīdēvdāt, Yima is presented as the builder of an underworld, a sub-terrestrial paradise eventually ruled by Zarathustra and his son. The story, giving a central position to the new religious leader, is once again probably the result of a Zoroastrian reformation, and Yima may have been the original ruler of the realm of the dead.
  In the Younger Avestan, the stolen cattle of *Trito was replaced with his two beautiful wives (vantā), said to have been abducted by the serpent Aži Dahāka and whom the hero Thraētona (a patronymic from Avestan Thrita) eventually wins back after confronting the monster. Vantā, which means "female who is desired", has been compared with Indo-Iranian *dhainu ("one who lactates, gives milk"), a frequent word for "cow" also used to designate female humans. Although Thraētona was aided in his quest by several deities, the pre-Zoroastrian warrior-god *Vr̥traghna ("Smasher of Resistance") seems the most probable original helper-god, since it was the name introduced in the Armenian version of the myth as Vahagn.
caption: The Iranian mythical king Yima. c. 1522.
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