With the accession of Zahhák evil becomes triumphant every­where. He practises and encourages black arts, idolatry, and human sacrifice. He has a warning dream concerning his destined conqueror Farídún, whom he strives in vain to capture. At length the people, driven to exasperation by Zahhák, revolt to Farídún at the instigation of Káwa the smith. Farídún and Zahhák meet, and the latter is taken prisoner.

Zahhák, as we have already seen,* was originally an evil spirit of the Indo-Íránian nature-worship. In the Zandavasta he still occa­sionally appears in his character of water-stealer. “Zarathustra asked Ardvi Súra Anáhita” (Anaitis, the good genius of the waters): “‘O Ardvi Súra Anáhita! With what manner of sacrifice shall I worship thee? … So that Mazda (Urmuzd) may make thee run down (to the earth), so that he may not make thee run up into the heavens, above the sun; and that the Serpent may not injure thee.’”*

More generally, however, he is represented as a fiend, created by Áhriman to vex the Iránian race, and carry off the light of sovereignty; while in the Sháhnáma he loses to a great extent his supernatural character, and is, as already has been pointed out,* the protagonist of the Semitic race in their dealings with the people of Írán. He is accordingly represented as a native of Arabia, to have invaded Írán, and to have had his capital at a city which is perhaps best identified with Babylon. We read in the Zandavasta: “To her (i.e. Anaitis) did Azi Daháka (Zahhák), the three-mouthed, offer up a sacrifice in the land of Bawri, with a hundred male horses, a thousand oxen, and ten thousand lambs. He begged of her a boon, saying: ‘Grant me this boon, O good, most beneficent Ardvi Súra Anáhita! that I may make all the seven Karshvares (Climes) of the earth empty of men.’ Ardvi Súra Anáhita did not grant him that boon… To her did Thraétaona (Farídún), the heir of the valiant Áthwya clan, offer up a sacrifice … saying: ‘Grant me this, O good, most beneficent Ardvi Súra Anáhita! that I may overcome Azi Daháka, the three-mouthed, the three-headed, the six-eyed … that demon, baleful to the world … that Angra Mainyu (Áhriman) created against the material world, to destroy the world of the good principle; and that I may deliver his two wives, Savanghavák (Shahrináz) and Erenavák (Arnawáz), who are the fairest of body amongst women, and the most wonderful creatures in the world.’”*

Zahhák's palace is called in the Zandavasta Kvirinta, which may mean in the Avasta language “a stork.” There is a legend that the palace was in the form of that bird.*

We learn from the Dínkard that the legend of Zahhák was contained in the Kitradád and Súdkar Nasks of the Zandavasta. The latter Nask contained information “About the smiting by Frédún, for the sake of killing Dahák; the striking of his club upon the nape of the neck, the heart, and even the skull; and Dahák's not dying from that beating. Then smiting him with a sword, and the formation of noxious creatures of many kinds, from the body of Dahák, at the first, second, and third blow. The exclamation of the creator Aúharmazd to Frédún thus: ‘Thou shouldst not cut him who is Dahák, because if thou shouldst cut him, Dahák would be making this earth full of serpents, toads, scorpions, lizards, tortoises, and frogs;’ with the mode of binding him with awful fetters, in the most grievous punishment of con­finement. This, too, that when Az-í Dahák was bound, the report of the same proceeded thus through all the regions, which are seven, that downstricken is Az-í Dahák, but he who smote him is Frédún the Áspikán, the exalted and mighty … and those which are evil do not mention Az, nor demand the virtuous maiden with importunity, nor even coveted wealth. This, too, that when information came to him of women or property, that seemed to him desirable to possess, they were then admitted by him into a golden cage.”*

Zahhák is looked upon in the Sháhnáma as exemplifying in his own person all the chief characteristics of the non-Aryan peoples with whom the Íránians came in contact—idolatry, black arts, serpent-worship, and human sacrifice. It is a remarkable fact, as is pointed out by Fergusson,* that serpent-worship seems always to have been accompanied by human sacrifice. He also appears to consider that the former was essentially Túránian, not Aryan or Semitic, and he points out that in the bas-relief at Nakhs-i-Rustam, in which Urmuzd is represented as bestowing the crown on Ardshír Pápakán, the first Sháh of the Sásánian dynasty, the god is seated on a horse, and beneath his feet lies Ardawán, the last king of the Parthian dynasty, with two serpents round his head.*

In the Sháhnáma, however, Zahhák is essentially Semitic, and his reign of a thousand years may be taken as typifying that race in their relations to the Íránians from the earliest tradi­tions of Assyrian oppression to the political overlordship of the Khalífas of Baghdad in the poet's own days.

The reader will notice that Zahhák is not slain by Farídún but imprisoned—a point indicative of his supernatural character; and also that the legend of Káwa the smith is, as one would naturally expect, a West Íránian tradition, as shown by its association with the city of Ispahán. The historical flag of the Persian empire, known as the flag of Káwa, the traditional origin of which will be found in the text, fell into the hands of the Muhammadans at the battle of Kádisiyya, A.D. 637. The natives of the town of Damáwand, situated on the south side of the mountain of that name, still celebrate a feast, called “Íd-i-Kúrdí,” or the Kúrds' Holiday, to commemorate the death of Zahhák,* while a cyclopean terrace in the neighbourhood is pointed out as the place where, in accord to Eastern usage, his drums were beaten at dawn.*

Zahhák's minister, Kundrav, has had a strange eventful mytho­logical history. In the Vedas he appears as Gandháva, the divine guardian of the Soma—the sacred drink-offering, the Homa of Írán. In the Zandavasta he is a monstrous fiend or monster known as Gandarewa or Gandarep, the slaying of whom was one of the great feats of the ancient Íránian hero Garshásp.* In the Sháhnáma he is represented as a human being—the factotum of Zahhák. The two are a good illustration of the relationship that exists between Indian and Íránian mythology, between the Vedas and the Zandavasta, and of the genesis of the legends of the Sháhnáma.

Some readers may like to see the version of the legend of Zahhák as given in the Armenian History attributed to Moses of Chorene, which though subsequent to his time is probably centuries anterior to the Sháhnáma, and shows that the legend was known in all its essential features long before Firdausí's days. It runs thus in Whiston's Latin version of the original:—

“Quid autem tibi sunt voluptati viles ac vanae de Byraspe Astyage* fabulae? aut cur nobis ineptos atque insulsos, ac rationis expertes Persarum sermones, laborem imponis explicandi, nempe de primo ejus benefacto malefico, Daemoniisque ei ministrantibus, útque errorem & falsitatem frustrari non potuerit, ac super humerorum osculatione, unde Draconum ortus fuit, ac deinde flagitii frequentia homines per ventris usum perdidit; útque Rhodanes* quidem posteá catenis eum aeneis constrinxerit, atque in montem, qui vocatur Dembavendus, abduxerit … is qui scelera machinabatur, domi eum forîsque sine suspicione erudire solebat, in Byraspis humeris caput reponens, ac maleficas artes in aurem inculcans, unde in fabulis narrant, puerum Satanae, ministrum ei fuisse, ejúsque voluntati obsecundâsse; útque etiam subinde, quasi praemium ab eo postulans, humeros ejus oscu-laretur. Caeterùm quod narrant, Dracones pullulâsse, sive ipsum Byraspem in Draconen prorsus mutatum fuisse, ita res se habet. Quippe cum immanem hominum numerum Daemoniis ille immolare coepisset, indignabunda multitudo ab eo tandem abalienata fuit, ísque igitur communi omnium consensu pulsus, ad montem supra memoratum confugit. Ibi, cum acriùs premeretur, sua eum caterva deseruit, quâ re confisi, qui eum persecuti erant, dies aliquot in iis locis residerunt. At Byraspes, cohortem dispersam cogens, ad inopinantes impetum facit (sic) magnúmque attulit detrimentum; sed vicit tandem multitudo, & Byraspes se in fugam contulit, quem comprehensum propè eum montem peremerunt, atque in magnam sulphuris foveam conjecerunt.”*

For the mythological account of Abtín, the father of Farídún, see the introductory note to the next reign. His legend up to the point where it is taken up in the Sháhnáma may be briefly summarised as follows. He was the head of a family of Persian landowners or thanes who dwelt in the Alburz range to the south of the Caspian and claimed to be descended from Jamshíd. He began the war of independence against Zahhák, but after some success was forced to take refuge with the remnant of his adherents at the court of the king of Ghílán, who received him kindly, but, fearing the vengeance of Zahhák, subsequently furnished him with ships and provisions, and dismissed him to seek his fortune elsewhere. After a month's voyage on the Caspian Abtín arrived at the court of the king of the Scythians, whose daughter Farának fell in love with him. Incidents similar to those in the story of Zál and Rúdába in the present volume followed. In the end Abtín married Farának, by whom he had two sons, and lived happily and in high favour with his father-in-law. He could not rest, however. In dream after dream he was incited to resume the war of independence against Zahhák, and at length, in spite of the opposition of his father-in-law, set sail with wife, family, and adherents, and after various adventures landed near Ámul in Mázandarán, where he made his home in the surrounding forests. Here he gathered a band of followers and resumed his guerilla warfare against Zahhák, in the midst of which Farídún was born, the birth being heralded by many prodigies. At this point the Sháhnáma takes up the story.*