Even as Iran continues to dominate the news cycle on account of its war with Israel and the United States, media coverage has continued to uncover civilisational links between Zoroastrian Persia and ancient India.
One particularly intriguing story is that of the dragon atop Mount Damavand. Located 70 kilometres from Tehran, Mount Damavand, a potentially active volcano, is the highest peak in Iran and the highest volcano in Asia, at an elevation of 5,609 metres. It is near the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, in Amol County in Iran’s Mazandaran Province.
According to legend, an azhdaha or a dragon-like creature is imprisoned in a cave atop the peak. He is to remain there till the end of time.
So, who is this dragon-like creature and what is the basis of the story?
Before being conquered by Arab Muslims between 633 and 651, Iran was predominantly Zoroastrian. Zoroastrianism was the state religion of three mighty Iranian empires, namely, the Achamenians, Parthians and the Sassanians.
The ancient Iranians, like Vedic people of the Indian subcontinent, were part of the Indo-European peoples (including Celts, Germanic tribes, Greeks and Romans). As such, scholars have noticed striking similarities between Vedic texts like the Rig Veda and the Avesta, the sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism.
Both, the Rig Veda and the Avesta, have stories of serpent-dragons being killed by gods/heroes so that ‘cosmic order’ is restored.
“Based on its prominence in the myths of many Indo-European peoples — including those of Iran, India, Greece, and Rome, with parallels among the Balts, the Slavs, the Armenians, and the Hittites — the dragon slaying myths would strongly seem to date back to the proto-Indo-European period or even earlier,” Manya Saadi-nejad from Concordia University writes in her paper The Iranian Dragon-slaying Myth: Dragons, the Avestan saošiiant, and Possible Connections to the Iranian Water Goddess.
She adds that, “Most of the various Indo-European peoples were utterly dependent on rivers, upon the banks of which they built their settlements and eventually their civilizations. These rivers were ambivalent neighbors; they could ensure fertility and enable life, or wash it away in a torrent. It may be that the association of dragons with rivers arose from the rivers’ serpentine shape.”
“In the Vedic version of the myth, it is the god Indra who slays the dragon Vṛtra, a symbol of chaos, who lurks at the foot of the mountain where he holds back the heavenly waters (RV II.11.5. Vṛtra is also called Dānava). By slaying the dragon with his special scepter vájra and cutting off its three heads, Indra frees the seven rivers (RV X.8.8-9). The waters rush out in the shape of cows (representing fertility), running to the sea. The battle represents an Indo-Iranian creation myth…,” notes Saadi-nejad.
Meanwhile, in the Avesta, Azi Dahaka “is a huge monster-dragon with three heads and six eyes, who wishes to bring drought and destruction”.
He lives in the inaccessible fortress of Kuuirinta in the land of Baβri, where he worships the deities Anahita, the river goddess, and Vāiiu, the god of wind (again, notice the similarity with the deity Vayu worshipped in India).
Azi Dahaka wants “the power to empty the world of people” and asks Ananhita and Vāiiu for the same. But they refuse.
Following the death of Jam or Jamshed, the ruler of the land, Azi Dahaka becomes king until, Θraētaona son of Aθβiya, kills him and restores ‘cosmic order’.
This, then, is the story: An evil dragon usurps the throne and rules over the land until he is vanquished by the hero. But it would be several years later that this story would resound in Iran.
It is the late 900s Common Era. Iran is mostly Muslim. Arabic is the literary language. The great Iranian empires of old are history.
But something else is not. The culture of the people has not been Arabised. The Iranians still set a great store for it. And then, out of the blue, a manuscript comes that cements its and Iran’s place in human history.
That book is the Shahnameh (the Epic of Kings). The author Ferdowsi, though, is not presenting anything new, as he himself admits.
In The Epic of the Kings, Nahal Tadjadod writes: “Why has it always been so popular? Not because of the originality of its subject—the history of ancient Iran from the time of its first mythical king to the last sovereign of the Sassanid dynasty in the seventh century AD—nor because of the novelty of its content. “What I will say, all have already told,” Ferdowsi claimed. The poet transmitted; he invented nothing. He drew on old oral traditions and on ancient texts such as the Avesta, a holy book of the eighth century BC, or reworked somewhat earlier tales on the same theme.”
She adds: “This immense poem of 50,000 couplets appeared in the tenth century, at a key moment in the history of Iranian culture. Since the fall of the Sassanids, the literary language of Iran had been Arabic. Middle Persian, the main vehicle of Sassanid civilization, was disappearing. At this moment, a young literature in an Iranian idiom — Persian emerged in the east. Ferdowsi’s poem would be its first masterpiece.”
In Ferdowsi’s version, Azi Dahaka becomes Zahhak, a king of Arab origin, who rules over Iran after Jamshed, the ruler, loses his divine glory and legitimacy to rule. One night, he wakes up from a nightmare. He consults seers who tell him that somewhere in the land, a child has been born who will be his nemesis. Zahhak makes all attempts to kill the child, who is a descendant of King Jamshed. But he and his mother escape to the Alborz mountains where the child, named Faridun, grows up.
Years later, a black smith named Kaveh raises the banner of revolt against Zahhak for having killed his children. He and several others march to the Alborz mountains and ask Faridun to be their leader, He agrees, marches to Zahhak’s capital and strikes him with his mace. But just as Faridun is about to kill Zahhak, an angel asks him to imprison the dragon in a cave atop Mount Damavand as “his time has not come yet”. Faridun does so.
According to Saadi-nejad, “In Iranian tradition, not only Bahrām (Vərəθraγna), but a number of other divine heroes and historical characters are dragon-slayers, and thereby establish themselves as champions of freedom, women, water and fertility. These are Rostam, Sām, Frēdōn, (Garšāsp), Goštāsp, Esfandīār, Ardašir Bābakān, Bahrām Gōr, and Bahrām Čōbīn.”
The timeless tale of Azi Dahaka and Θraētaona/Zahak and Faridun thus represents the struggle between good and evil and serves as a symbol of Iranian resistance against tyranny and foreign rule.
Interestingly, Mount Damavand, where the dragon is believed to be imprisoned, has been confirmed by scientists to have most recently erupted approximately 7,300 years ago.
Today, the existence of the sulphuric, “fumarolic” gases are considered to be the breath of the imprisoned Azi Dahaka/Zahhak, who will be killed when the end of time comes.