Frashokereti

Summary

Frashokereti is the name of the end of time in Zoroastrian religion. In Avestan it means "making the world wonderful", and in Middle Persian it is frašegird. Its first mention is in the hymns of Zarathustra: "and may we be those who make this life wonderful". The Zamyad Yasht then describes it: the victorious Saoshyant and his helpers restore the world, which will thenceforth never grow old, never die, never decay or rot, ever living and ever increasing; the dead rise and immortality comes. Astvat-ereta rises from Lake Kasaoya with the weapon the heroes bore before him, looks on all living creatures with the eye of plenty and gives them immortality, and the demon of Wrath flees before his companions. Good Thought smites Evil Thought, the true word smites the false, Wholeness and Immortality smite hunger and thirst, and Angra Mainyu bows and flees, powerless.

Its fullest account is chapter 30 of the Bundahishn in West's translation, chapter 34 of the Iranian Bundahishn. Zarathustra asks Ohrmazd: how will a body come back that the wind has carried off and the water swept away? Ohrmazd answers: I made what was not; why should I not make again what was? The bone is asked back from the spirit of the earth, the blood from the water, the hair from the plants, the life from the fire. The bones of Gayomard, the first man, rise first, then those of the first couple, then the rest of mankind, in fifty-seven years; half the light of the sun goes to Gayomard and half to the rest, so that each knows his father, mother, brother and wife. Then all people gather in one assembly; each sees his own good and evil deeds, and a wicked man stands out among them like a white sheep among black ones. The righteous are set apart from the wicked; the one goes to heaven, the other is thrown into hell for three days and nights, and people weep until their tears run down to their legs, a father parted from his wife, a brother from his brother.

Then fire melts the metal of Desirable Dominion in the hills and mountains, and it lies on the earth like a river; all people pass through it and are purified: to the righteous it seems that he walks in warm milk, to the wicked that he walks in molten metal. Then all people come together with the greatest affection, and father asks son and brother asks brother: where have you been these many years, and what was the judgment on your soul? Saoshyant performs the last sacrifice, slaughtering the ox Hadhayosh, and from its fat and the white haoma prepares a drink that makes all people immortal; the grown are restored at forty years of age, the young at fifteen. Then Ohrmazd seizes the evil spirit and each of the Amesha Spentas seizes his adversary among the daevas; Ahriman flees back into the darkness through the passage by which he came in, the serpent is burned in the molten metal, the stench and pollution of hell are burned in the metal and hell becomes pure, and hell is brought back to enlarge the world. The earth becomes a plain without ice and without slope, and the mountain on which the head of the Chinvat Bridge rests is brought down and is no more.

The idea the story turns on is that the end of time gives back its beginning. Everything handed over at the first creation is asked back, bone from earth and blood from water, the first man is the first to rise, and the earth becomes a plain again, as it was before Ahriman's assault; for the translator of the Bundahishn, the mountains are the evil spirit's work and vanish with him. But the return does not simply restart the beginning: the Encyclopaedia Iranica says that after Frashokereti time no longer exists and Ahriman cannot attack again, because he has been defeated once and for all, that the book of Zadspram calls it the roof by which Ohrmazd completes his house, and that the Iranian Bundahishn has the god rest from his work after it. Righteous and wicked are purified in the same river, so the new world is made only after every person has passed through the metal that Desirable Dominion guards.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the Persian essay sets Frashokereti against the Day of Resurrection without reading the word, and the rereading essay reads it as a vision of progress. The Avestan word has two parts: fraša, wonderful, excellent, and kərəti, making. The letters of the first are f, r and š, the letters of Arabic farsh, which Lane gives as a wide, even, soft tract of land unobstructed by mountains; one says "from the ʿarsh to the farsh", from the highest heaven to the earth. The letters of the second are k and r, those of Arabic karra, which Lane gives as a return, and hence the return to life, the resurrection, the renewal of creation after it has perished. On this reading the name is "the return on the spread-out land": creation coming back on an earth made level and wide, which is what the Bundahishn tells: the dead rise, and the earth becomes a plain with no mountain.

Linguistic Root

Forms of the word

Almut Hintze writes in the Encyclopaedia Iranica that the word is a compound of the adjective fraša and an abstract noun from the verb kar, to make, probably meaning "making wonderful or excellent", that the etymology of fraša and its basic meaning are not clear, and that it may correspond to Vedic pṛkṣá, strong. In Old Persian Darius uses the adjective of the most beautiful palace he had built at Susa and says of his work on it: "I made it excellent", so outside religion the word has nothing to do with the end of time. The Sanskrit translation of the Avesta renders it "making increase" and "imperishable".

Farsh and karra

Lane: farashahu, he spread it out; farsh is a wide, spacious plain, or land that is plain, even and soft and unobstructed by mountains; farsh is also herbage that spreads on the ground without standing on a stem; and one says "from the ʿarsh to the farsh". The Qur'an says: "and the earth, We spread it out (farashnāhā), and how well We smoothed it". The f, r and š of fraša are the letters of f-r-sh in their order, and the reading meets what the Bundahishn and Plutarch say of the end of time: a level land with no mountain. Lane also gives karra as a return, as in "would that we had a karra", and, from the Tāj al-ʿarūs, the return to life, the resurrection, the renewal of creation after it has perished; karr is turning back to the fight after withdrawing. The k and r of kərəti are the letters of karr, and the t is the Avestan abstract suffix. Put the two parts together and the word is "the return on the spread-out land".

Two things in the reading remain unsettled: Iranian fraša is "excellent, wonderful", said of a palace and of a fine camel, not of spread-out land; and kərəti comes from the common Iranian verb of making, answered by Sanskrit kṛ, not from a verb of return.

The two essays

Neither essay reads the word itself. The Persian essay places it in its table of what passed from Zoroastrianism into the Semitic religions, against "the Day of the Lord" in Hebrew and "the Day of Resurrection" in Islam; in its table of Angra Mainyu and Iblis it says the first is defeated at Frashokereti and the second on the Day of Resurrection; and it sets the resurrection against the raising of bodies. The rereading essay calls it "the final reform" and reads it as an early vision of progress.

Key Mythic Narratives

The three saviours and the winter

The Pahlavi books make the road to Frashokereti three stages, each with a saviour born from Zarathustra's seed; in each stage the whole creation draws nearer to the renovation, which is completed only by the third, the victorious Saoshyant. In the millennium of the first comes a deadly winter, after which the world is repeopled from Jamshid's enclosure. The number of Saoshyant's helpers differs between the books: six, or fifteen men and fifteen maidens, or a thousand.

The fate of the wicked

The Pahlavi books disagree about the fate of the wicked. In the Pahlavi Rivayat the wicked are damned for ever and the souls of those who gave themselves to Ahriman and the demons are annihilated; in the Iranian Bundahishn the wicked are cleansed, with great pain, in the river of molten metal that all people cross, and then they too praise Ohrmazd and the Amesha Spentas. The Encyclopaedia Iranica notes a sense of grievance in the texts at righteous and wicked being treated alike, which may be why some of them increase the sinners' torment before the end.

Among the Greeks

Plutarch reports from Theopompus, in the fourth century BCE, that at the destined time Areimanius, bringing on pestilence and famine, shall by these be utterly destroyed; then the earth shall become a level plain, and there shall be one way of life and one government for a blessed people who shall all speak one tongue; they shall need no food and cast no shadow; and the god who brought all this about shall rest for a time.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Persian myths reads Frashokereti as an early vision of what is now called progress: the river of molten metal as the industrial revolution and the smelting of metals, the purification of the wicked as the end of ignorance through education, the end of sickness and death as medicine and longer life, the melting of the mountains as mining that levels the land. The ancient text makes the metal that of Desirable Dominion, guardian of the metals from which weapons, coins and vessels are made; so the image in the Bundahishn is of metal melted to purify, and the modern reading makes the melting itself an industry.

The Persian essay makes Frashokereti the mould into which later religions poured the Day of Resurrection. The Qur'an has the image of the levelled earth: "they ask you about the mountains; say: my Lord will scatter them as dust, and leave the earth a level plain, in which you will see no crookedness and no rise", as in the Bundahishn the earth becomes a plain without slope and the mountain is brought down and is no more. The two accounts differ in that the reckoning in the Qur'an follows the resurrection and does not purify everyone, while in the Bundahishn all people cross the river of metal and are purified.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The closest account to Frashokereti is the Norse Ragnarök: the world burns in Surtr's fire, then the seeress sees the earth rise from the sea a second time, green; unsown fields bear, and Baldr comes back from the house of the dead to live with Höðr. Both accounts bring the fire before the new earth, and the new earth has no evil in it. They part in that the Norse gods die in the battle and their sons survive, with no saviour, while the Zoroastrian world is renewed at the hand of the prophet's son and all its divine beings remain. Before Ragnarök comes the great winter, as the Pahlavi books put a deadly winter in the millennium of the first saviour, before Frashokereti.

In India the world is destroyed at the end of each day of Brahmā, a day being a thousand rounds of the four ages. The Viṣṇu Purāṇa says a dearth lasts a hundred years; then Viṣṇu, in the form of Rudra, enters the seven rays of the sun and drinks up all the waters of the earth; the rays become seven suns that burn the three worlds until the earth is left bare like the back of a tortoise; then he breathes out clouds that rain for a hundred years and drown everything; then Viṣṇu sleeps on the serpent Śeṣa upon the waters for a night as long as that day, and on waking creates the universe anew. In both accounts fire burns and purifies the earth, but in India the dissolution comes again age after age, while Frashokereti happens once, after which there is no more time.

Cicero reports from the Stoics that at the last the whole world will take fire when the moisture is used up, leaving nothing but fire, from which, since it is living and divine, the world will be renewed and the same order arise again, and he says Panaetius doubted it. Here fire gives back the same world; in Frashokereti it gives back a world without evil.

Frashokereti gathers what other pages tell: the reckoning that sets righteous apart from wicked, as in the judgment of the dead; the serpent burned in the molten metal, as in the chaoskampf; the bone asked back from the earth and the blood from the water, the cosmic body pattern read from its end; and the bringing down of the mountain on which the bridge rests, as on the sacred mountain.