Daevas

Summary

The daevas, in Zoroastrian religion, are the followers of Angra Mainyu, the harmful spirit. The word is daēuua in the Avesta and daiva in Old Persian, and became dīv in New Persian. In India the same word is deva, and there it is the name of the gods: Monier-Williams derives deva from the verb div and glosses it "heavenly, divine", the gods in the plural being "the heavenly or shining ones". The word the Indian singers call their gods by is the word the Iranians drive their demons out with.

Their oldest record is in the hymns of Zarathustra. He says in Yasna 30: in the beginning there were two twin spirits, one better and one worse, in thought, word and deed; the worse chose the worst deeds and the beneficent spirit chose the truth. But the daevas did not choose rightly between the two spirits, because delusion came upon them as they deliberated: the Worst Mind approached them to be chosen, they chose him, and then they rushed together to the demon of Fury to ruin the life of men. In Yasna 32 he addresses them: but you, O daevas, are all a seed of the evil mind, and whoever sacrifices to you most is of the Lie; you cheat men of happy life and of immortality. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says that in the Gathas the daevas have not yet become demons: they are a class of genuine but rejected gods, still worshipped by the leaders of the wider nation, and once worshipped by Zarathustra's own people.

In the Younger Avesta they become small, wicked spirits who disturb the order of the world, human health and religious life. The Vendidad tells how Angra Mainyu, "the daeva of daevas", rushed out from the region of the north and sent the she-demon Būiti, the unseen death, to kill Zarathustra, and how Zarathustra chanted his prayer and she fled. Then the text lists the daevas by name: Indra, Sauru, Naonhaithya, Taurvi and Zairi, Aeshma of the wounding spear, Zaurva who is old age, Būiti, Driwi who is poverty, Daiwi who is lying, Kasvi who is meanness. Angra Mainyu says: let the daevas gather at the head of Arezura, the gate of hell. They run off shouting: let us gather at the head of Arezura, for Zarathustra is born in the house of Pourushaspa; how can we kill him? He is the stroke that fells the fiends. Then they rush away into the depths of the dark world of hell. The Vendidad also gives the words with which someone being purified drives them from house, village, town and land: I drive away Indra, I drive away Sauru, I drive away the daeva Naonhaithya.

Xerxes says in an inscription found at Persepolis and Pasargadae: among these lands there was a place where the daivas had been worshipped before; by the grace of Ahura Mazda I destroyed that sanctuary of the daivas and proclaimed: the daivas shall not be worshipped; and where the daivas had been worshipped, there I worshipped Ahura Mazda. In the Bundahishn Ahriman makes six daevas at the beginning of time, Akoman, evil thought, then Andar, who is Indra, then Sovar, then Nakahed, then Tairev and Zairich, each the adversary of one of the Amesha Spentas, and at the end each of these seizes his own adversary.

The idea the stories of the daevas turn on is that they are gods who chose wrongly. They are not created demons in the Gathas: they deliberate, the evil thought comes to them, and they choose it, just as every person is asked to choose between the two spirits. That is why the text puts god and worshipper on the same side: the daevas, and the daeva-worshippers who sacrifice to them. Darmesteter says that only the word went down to hell, not the beings it had named: Mitra remained, haoma remained, the Indian soma, and Indra's title "slayer of Vṛtra" remained in Iran as the name of the god of victory, Verethragna, while the name Indra alone became a demon's name.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The Persian essay reads the daevas as Arabic ḍiyāʾ, light, calls the reading certain, and says the meaning was inverted: a god in India, a devil in Iran. The Indian essay reads deva as ḍiyāʾ, ḍaww and dhaww, and makes Indian deva, Latin deus and Arabic ḍiyāʾ one network of light. The sense is in place: Monier-Williams's verb div is to shine, whence the words for sky and day, and the gods are "the shining ones"; in Lane ḍāʾa is to give light, to shine. The letters are another matter: Indian and Iranian d is answered by Arabic dh, by which the Zeus, Jupiter and Dyaus pages read this same stem as dhū, and ḍ does not answer d. On this reading the word is "those who possess the light": the letters from dhū, the sense from ḍiyāʾ. That is what the text makes of them: in Iran the name of light became the name of those who flee into the depths of darkness.

Linguistic Root

Forms of the word

The Encyclopaedia Iranica takes the Iranian word back to one Indo-European source with Indian deva, and notes that the Avesta keeps phrases shared with the Indian hymns, such as "daevas and mortals" and "all the daevas". Monier-Williams notes that deva is applied, rarely, to evil demons in the Atharvaveda.

Letters and sense

The Persian essay reads the word as ḍiyāʾ, the Indian essay as ḍiyāʾ, ḍaww and dhaww. Lane: ḍāʾa and aḍāʾa, it gave light, it shone; ḍawʾ and ḍiyāʾ, light. That is the sense the Indian root carries: div is to shine, dyu the sky and the day, and the gods are the shining ones. The letter is another matter. Arabic ḍ is answered by ṣ in Hebrew and Akkadian, as the project's sound-change file sets Arabic arḍ against Hebrew ereṣ and Akkadian erṣetu; it is not answered by d. The d of div is the d of Greek Dios and old Latin Diovis, which the Jupiter page read as dhū when it settled that the old Diespiter is dhū and ab, and the Dyaus page followed. The two readings therefore meet at two levels: the letters are dhū, possessor and master of a thing, and the sense is the ḍiyāʾ the root carries, so that the daevas and the Indian gods are, on this reading, "those who possess the light".

Ahuras and daevas

The Persian essay makes Ahura, Asura and Assur one word, and the Indian structural essay says the asuras became demons in India and the devas gods, while in Iran the ahura became the highest god and the daevas demons, so that what is a god on one side is a demon on the other. The Encyclopaedia Iranica treats this symmetry as one of three explanations of the daevas' story, and notes that Burrow showed the asuras became demons in India only late, so the symmetry cannot be an ancient division between the two peoples. The word ahura itself is set out on the Ahura page.

Key Mythic Narratives

Who were the daevas?

The Gathas name none of the daevas, so it is not known exactly who they were. In the Vendidad the list is headed by three names that are names of gods in India: Indra; Sauru, compared with Śarva, a name of Rudra and Śiva; and Naonhaithya, compared with Nāsatya, the title of the Aśvins. The Encyclopaedia Iranica gives three explanations of these names: gods some Iranians still worshipped, an ancient memory, or Indian names given Iranian sounds. Darmesteter says the match of Sauru with Śarva fails, since Sauru is the Vedic arrow, death. The Bundahishn makes the three the adversaries of three Amesha Spentas: Andar of Best Truth, Savar of Desirable Dominion, Nakahed of Devotion.

Xerxes' sanctuary of the daivas

Scholars disagree about the daivas whose sanctuary Xerxes destroyed. Some think he destroyed an Iranian sanctuary of gods Zarathustra had rejected; Dandamayev takes them to be Mithra, Anahita and the others Zarathustra condemned; others the gods of a rebel land, Babylon or another; and Sancisi-Weerdenburg reads the inscription as a general proclamation that the sanctuaries of rebels' gods will be destroyed. The Yasht of Anahita mentions daeva-worshippers who offer her libations at night, which suggests that in this period "daeva" named any worship done the wrong way.

The div of the epic

In New Persian the daevas became the dīv, the ogres of the epic. When Zal was born with white hair his father Sam asked: what shall I tell the nobles, that he is the brat of a div? The Encyclopaedia Iranica mentions the White Div of Mazandaran, whose story the Shahnameh tells, and says the view that he was an old local god is pure conjecture. At the end of time the daevas flee powerless across the bridge of the sky by which Ahriman broke in, as the Iranian Bundahishn tells in Frashokereti. Warner's Shahnama I, p. 241, Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Daiva", "Frašō.kərəti".

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Persian myths reads Ahura Mazda as the settled farming society and Angra Mainyu as the nomad raiders, and makes his followers, the daevas, the invading tribes of the steppe who bring chaos and ruin to the crops. The texts do make the daevas gods worshipped by other people, and in the Gathas the leaders of the wider nation worship them, so the reading finds for the enmity between gods a root in an enmity between groups of people, which is also what some Iranists suppose when they take the daevas for the gods of tribes living beside the Iranians.

The text brings the daevas close to human life twice: in the Gathas they choose as a person chooses, and in the Vendidad they bear the names of what befalls people, old age, poverty, lying, meanness and the unseen death. The demon in these names is a picture of what ruins life in house and village, which is why it is driven out of house, village, town and land with the same words.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The first daeva in the Vendidad's list bears the name of the king of the Indian gods, Indra, who kills the dragon Vṛtra in the Rigveda. Darmesteter says Indra remained bright and mighty in Iran under another name, his title "slayer of Vṛtra", which became the name of the god of victory, Verethragna. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says the ancestors of the Indians and Iranians worshipped "All the Immortals", the daevas among them, and that when Zarathustra rejected the daevas he commanded his followers to worship only the beneficent ones, the Amesha Spentas. Darmesteter, Introduction, pp. lxxx–lxxxi, Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Aməša Spənta".

In Yasna 30 the daevas deliberate in their council and the evil thought comes to them to be chosen, and in the Vendidad they gather at the gate of hell to plot Zarathustra's death: they are a council of gods that chooses wrongly, set against Ahura Mazda's council, where the seven are "of one thought, one speech, one deed". This is one form of the divine council. The daevas' flight at the end of time is told in Frashokereti. Yasna 30.6, Mills's translation, Vendidad 19.44–47.