IV
JAMSHÍD
HE REIGNED SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS
ARGUMENT

Jamshíd succeeds his father Tahmúras as Sháh, and becomes the greatest and most famous of the culture-heroes. He continues the work of his predecessors, makes additions of his own, and introduces the luxuries and refinements of life. He divides man­kind into four castes or classes. He travels over the world, and is the first to cross the sea in ships. He aspires to the dominion of the air, obtains it, and lives in ever closer communion with God. Áhriman is rendered powerless for ill, disease and death cease, and the world passes through the Golden Age. At length, spoiled by success, Jamshíd comes to think himself God, and orders that divine honours shall be paid to himself alone. The Grace of God abandons him. Áhriman is unchained and incites Zahhák, who has become his instrument, to make war on Jamshíd, and the latter is slain.

NOTE

Jamshíd, as we have already seen, is the brother, not the son, of Tahmúras in the older form of the legends. With the reign of Jamshíd the Vedas, Zandavasta, and Sháhnáma meet on common ground. In the Vedas Manu and Yama are the twin sons o Vivasvat, the bright or shining one, i.e. the sun. Manu is the progenitor and lawgiver of the Aryan race and Yama is a god.* In the Zandavasta Yima is the son of Vívanghat, is the Íránian Noah, has a covenant with God, and is offered by Him the post afterwards accepted by Zoroaster. In the legend of the building of his Var, or underground palace, in anticipation of the Flood, we have the origin of Firdausí's account of the architectural achieve­ments of Jamshíd: “Then Yima said within himself: ‘How shall I manage to make that Vara which Ahura Mazda has commanded me to make?’ And Ahura Mazda said unto Yima: ‘O fair Yima, son of Vívanghat! Crush the earth with a stamp of thy heel, and then knead it with thy hands, as the potter does when kneading the potter's clay…’ And Yima made a Vara, long as a riding-ground, on every side of the square… There he established dwelling-places, consisting of a house with a balcony, a courtyard, and a gallery. In the largest part of the place he made nine streets, six in the middle part, three in the smallest.”*

He is described as “the bright Yima, the good shepherd … he ruled over the seven Karshvares (Climes) of the earth, over the Daévas (demons) and men… He who took from the Daévas both riches and welfare, both fatness and flocks, both weal and Glory. In whose reign both aliments (food and drink) were never failing for feeding creatures, flocks and men were undying, waters and plants were undrying; in whose reign there was neither cold wind nor hot wind, neither old age nor death, nor envy made by the Daévas, in the times before his lie, before he began to have delight in words of falsehood and untruth. But when he began to have delight in words of falsehood and untruth, the Glory was seen to flee away from him in the shape of a bird. When his Glory had disappeared, then the great Yima … the good shepherd, trembled and was in sorrow before his foes; he was confounded, and laid him down on the ground.”* Elsewhere his being sawn asunder is mentioned, the act not being referred directly to Zahhák but to Spityura, “he who sawed Yima in twain.”*

Spityura was a brother of Yima's. He is not mentioned in the Sháhnáma; but the enmity between brothers, so characteristic of Eastern life, crops up again and again in the poem. Thus the two brothers of Farídún envy and try to murder him, and the incident recurs with more disastrous results in the case of Farídún's own sons.

The division into castes also appears in the Zandavasta, where both the three and the four castes are mentioned, and the first three are there stated to have been instituted by Zoroaster, who placed his three earthly sons at the head of them.* In the poem they are the institution of his great predecessor Jamshíd.

Jamshíd is a contraction of Yima and Khshaéta (king).*

For Iblís, see Introduction, p. 70.

Zahhák will be dealt with under his proper head; but it may be pointed out with regard to the strange story of his second fall, owing to the pleasures of the table, that in the Bundahish Máshya and Máshyóí—the original human pair—who apparently at first lived entirely on water, are incited to partake of stronger meats owing to their relish for the weaker sorts being taken from them by the demons.*

Elsewhere in the same work we read: “On the nature of the resurrection and future existence it says in revelation, that, whereas Máshya and Máshyóí … first fed upon water, then plants, then milk, and then meat, men also when their time of death has come, first desist from eating meat, then milk, then from bread, till when they shall die they always feed upon water. So, likewise, in the millennium… They will desist from meat food, and eat vegetables and milk; afterwards they abstain from milk food and abstain from vegetable food, and are feeding on water; and for ten years before Sóshyans comes they remain without food, and do not die.”*

Sóshyans is the third of the divine sons of Zoroaster, and the Messiah of Zoroastrianism. There is plenty in the above extract to account for such a legend as that of the text.