The Demons with Disheveled Hair: Reading the Zand-i Wahman Yasn as Zoroastrian Eyewitness to the End of the World
What this text is The Zand-i Wahman Yasn — sometimes rendered Zand-ī Vohuman Yasn , "The Commentary on the Wahman Yasht" — is one of the most extraordinary documents in religious literature, and one of the least read. It is a Pahlavi (Middle Persian) apocalyptic text that purports to record a vision granted to Zarathustra by Ahura Mazda, in which the prophet is shown the future of his religion across cosmic ages culminating in catastrophe and final renewal.
What this resource contributes
What this text is The Zand-i Wahman Yasn — sometimes rendered Zand-ī Vohuman Yasn , "The Commentary on the Wahman Yasht" — is one of the most extraordinary documents in religious literature, and one of the least read. It is a Pahlavi (Middle Persian) apocalyptic text that purports to record a vision granted to Zarathustra by Ahura Mazda, in which the prophet is shown the future of his religion across cosmic ages culminating in catastrophe and final renewal. In its surviving form it dates to the late Sasanian or early Islamic period, with substantial expansion during and after the Arab conquest of Persia. The book belongs to a small body of Zoroastrian apocalyptic literature — alongside the Bundahishn 's eschatological sections, the Jamasp Namag , and parts of the Denkard — that responded to the destruction of the Sasanian state by recasting the conquest as cosmic catastrophe.
Topics and source signals
Primary sources detected
Gathas · Avesta · Hebrew Bible · Quran · Bundahishn · Denkard
Scholars detected
Anders Hultgård