Afrasiab

Summary

Afrasiab is the king of Turan and Iran's great enemy in Persian myth; his wars fill more than half of the Shahnameh. In the Avesta he is Fraŋrasyan the Turanian, the villain, who lives in an underground palace of iron called Hankana, where he sacrifices a hundred stallions, a thousand oxen and ten thousand lambs to Anahita and asks her to let him seize the khvarenah, the divine glory that floats in the sea Vourukasha and belongs to the Aryans; she refuses. Yasht 19 tells that he stripped and plunged into the sea three times to catch the glory, and each time the glory fled from him and a new lake was formed from the sea, and he came out saying: if I cannot conquer the glory, I will defile all corn and liquors. Then Haoma asks to bind him and drag him to King Haosravah, Kay Khosrow, who kills him behind the deep salt lake Chaechasta to avenge his father Siyavash. Yasht 5.41–43; Yasht 19.56–64 and 19.77; Yasht 9.17–22.

In the Bundahishn he descends from Tur son of Fereydun, is the brother of Garsiwaz and Aghrirath, and is Kay Khosrow's grandfather through his daughter. He besieged Manuchehr and the Iranians in the mountains of Padashkhvar and spread ruin and want among them; his brother Aghrirath begged a favour for them and they were saved, and Afrasiab killed him for it. He made the mountain Bakyir his stronghold and lived inside it, diverted a thousand springs into the sea Kyansih, and carried off the river Nahvtak, which will not flow again until the saviour Ushedar comes. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says his most characteristic work is holding back waters, draining rivers and causing drought, and that the Bundahishn states plainly that he withheld rain from Iran until King Zav brought it back.

In the Shahnameh he invades Iran, captures King Nowzar and cuts off his head, cleaves his brother Aghrirath in two for freeing the captives, and is lifted from his saddle by Rostam and flees. He sends armies with Sohrab; then Siyavash takes refuge with him and he gives him his daughter Farangis, then kills him on his brother's slander. When Kay Khosrow became king he waged the great war until Afrasiab fled across the sea and hid in a cave on a mountain near Barda, lamenting his lost kingdom. A hermit named Hum, of Fereydun's line, heard him, went into the cave and bound him with his girdle; Afrasiab complained of the tight bonds, Hum loosened them, and Afrasiab broke free, threw himself into the lake of Khanjast and vanished. Kay Khosrow had his brother Garsiwaz sewn into an ox-hide until he cried out, and when Afrasiab heard his brother's voice he rose to the surface; Hum threw his lasso, caught him by the neck and dragged him out, and Kay Khosrow struck his neck with an Indian sword, saying: you killed my father when I was not yet born.

The idea his story turns on is that Afrasiab seeks what is not his, and what he gets in its place is ruin. He wants the glory that belongs to the Aryans and cannot hold it, so he threatens to spoil the grain and the drink, holds back the rivers and the rain, and kills the brother who saved the captives and the son-in-law who trusted him. The water he takes for a refuge does not hide him: the sea yields lakes but not the glory, and the lake he dives into gives him up when he hears his brother's voice. At the end he is killed by his grandson, the son of his daughter and of the man he killed.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the Persian essay does not read it. The Encyclopaedia Iranica reports that Benveniste traced Fraŋrasyan to a verb meaning to make disappear, to fell, to destroy, and that the Persian form Frāsiyāb ends in āb, water. In Arabic farasa is said of the lion breaking the neck of its prey, then of killing in any manner, and of the slaughterer breaking or severing the neck of the beast. That is what the story makes him: three blows at the neck, Nowzar's neck, Aghrirath cleft in two, and Siyavash's head cut off as a sheep's is cut. The end of the name is Arabic ʿubāb, the main body of a torrent, its height and its waves, and ʿabba is to drink water without taking breath. That too is what the story makes him: the king who plunges three times into the sea, diverts a thousand springs and drinks the rivers dry.

Linguistic Root

Forms of the name

Bartholomae says the original meaning of Fraŋrasyan is unknown and that its ŋr comes from an older sr; he notes that he dwells in an iron fortress inside the earth, is bound by Haoma and killed by Haosravah. Benveniste, as Yarshater reports in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, derives it from *fra-hrasya-, to make disappear, to fell, to destroy, from a verb matching Sanskrit sraṃs-, to fall, and the Persian form from *Frahrasyāpa-, ending in āp, water; Yarshater finds that this suits his figure as the one who withholds rain. His Avestan epithet is mairya, deceitful, villainous, which Nyberg takes as "(evil) man".

Farasa

Lane: farasahu is said of a lion that breaks or crushes its prey's neck, and this is the primary sense; then it is killing in any manner, as "the lion killed him"; iftarasahu is to take it as prey; and farasa al-dhabīḥa is said of the slaughterer who breaks the bone of the neck before the animal is cold, or severs its spinal cord, or divides its neck, which is forbidden. The reading takes f, r and s from the name. It parts from Benveniste's analysis in that for him f and r are the preverb fra- and the s belongs to the verb, so Arabic joins in one root what the Iranian divides between preverb and verb, and it does not read the nasal of the Avestan form. The two meet in sense: felling and destroying for Benveniste, killing by breaking the neck in Arabic.

ʿUbāb

Lane: ʿubāb is the main body of a torrent, its height and abundance, or its waves, and the first part of a thing; ʿabba is to drink water without taking breath, or in one draught. An initial ʿ drops in the Juthoor table, leaving āb. That word is water itself in Persian, so the reading meets the Persian word in its sense and adds from Arabic the abundance of water and the drinking of it without a breath.

Key Mythic Narratives

The palace under the earth

The Encyclopaedia Iranica, citing the Greater Bundahishn and other texts, says his underground palace was of iron, a thousand times a man's height, held up by a hundred columns, lit by stars, a sun and a moon that he made by magic, with four rivers running in it, of water, wine, milk and sour milk. It reports that the Mēnōg ī xrad says Ahriman created Zahhak, Afrasiab and Alexander immortal and Ohrmazd altered their state, and that Theodore bar Kōnay records among Zoroastrian beliefs that the earth was a young virgin betrothed to "Parisag", in whom Benveniste recognized Afrasiab; Yarshater sees in this the remnant of an old myth that made drought a rape of the earth. Hence the arrow of Arash: Spandarmad, the spirit of the earth, ordered the archer Arash to shoot an arrow whose landing would be the frontier between Iran and Turan.

Afrasiab and Astyages

Warner notes that Kay Khosrow's story is the story of Cyrus in Herodotus: Astyages, king of the Medes, dreams twice about his daughter and fears her son will take his throne, orders the child killed, the child is hidden with a herdsman and grows up, and then overthrows his grandfather. Afrasiab is Astyages, Farangis Mandane, Siyavash Cambyses, Kay Khosrow Cyrus and Piran Harpagus.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Persian myths reads Angra Mainyu as whatever ruins the settled farmer: drought, pests and nomad raiders from the steppe, and reads the war of Iran and Turan as a civil war of one people divided. Afrasiab joins both readings: in the Avesta and the Bundahishn he withholds rain, drains rivers and spoils the grain, and in the Shahnameh he is Fereydun's descendant, cousin of Iran's kings and grandfather of their king Kay Khosrow. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says his legends came to carry the memory of steppe raids from Central Asia on Iranian settlements, and that his defeat by Zav was commemorated in the Festival of Waters.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Yarshater says Afrasiab was either originally a hostile deity who withheld rain as the Indian Vṛtra does, or absorbed the features of such a deity. In the Rigveda Vṛtra holds back the waters until Indra kills him and they run; Afrasiab diverts springs and carries off rivers until he is killed, and the rivers flow again under Zav and Kay Khosrow. In Iran itself Tishtrya, the bringer of rain, fights the drought demon Apaosha.

Among the Norse, Loki flees after Baldr's death and hides in a waterfall in the shape of a salmon; the gods make a net and Thor catches him, and he is bound. Afrasiab slips from Hum and hides in the lake, then comes up and is caught with a lasso. In both stories the enemy flees into the water after killing the innocent and is taken out of it as a fish is taken.

In the Enūma eliš Kingu, commander of Tiamat's army, carries the Tablet of Destinies, which is not his; Marduk takes it from him and binds him, and he is later killed. Afrasiab seeks the glory that is not his three times and cannot hold it, and then he is bound and killed.