Gayomart

Summary

Gayomart is the first man of Persian myth and, in the Shahnameh, the first king on earth. The Bundahishn, the Zoroastrian book of creation, tells that Ohrmazd made him the sixth of his creations, after the sky, the water, the earth, the plants and the primal ox. He set him on the left bank of the river Daitya and the ox on the other bank; Gayomart was round and shining like the sun, as broad as he was tall, and his body was made from earth. After three thousand years Ahriman woke from his stupor, broke through the sky, came down on the water, pierced the earth, withered the plants, then came to the ox, then to Gayomart, then to the fire, and spread snakes and scorpions over the earth until not a needle's point was free of them. Before he reached Gayomart, Ohrmazd brought a sweat over him for as long as it takes to recite one prayer; when Gayomart came out of the sweat he saw the world as dark as night. Ahriman let loose on him Astwihad, the demon of death, with a thousand demons, but they could not take him, because his time had not come: thirty years were appointed for him after the assault. Gayomart said: "Although the destroyer has come, mankind will be all of my race; and this one thing is good, when they perform duty and good works." Bundahishn 3.12–23; Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Gayōmart".

The primal ox died and fell on its right side; thirty years later Gayomart died and fell on his left. As he died his seed came forth; the light of the sun purified it in its motion, Neryosang kept two portions and Spandarmad, the spirit of the earth and one of the Amesha Spentas, received one. It lay in the earth forty years, and then a one-stemmed rhubarb plant grew from it, which after fifteen years became a man and a woman joined together, Mashya and Mashyana, the parents of all people. The Encyclopaedia Iranica, following the Greater Bundahishn, adds that Ohrmazd took Gayomart's form and entrusted it to the station of the sun, where it shines, and that the kinds of metal came from the members of his body. At the end of time Gayomart's bones are raised first, then those of Mashya and Mashyana, then the rest of mankind, and half the light of the sun is given to Gayomart.

The Shahnameh makes him the first to wear the crown and sit on the throne. He lived on a mountain, and he and his people wore leopard skins, for food and clothing were in their infancy; he ruled the earth thirty years, and the cattle and the beasts of prey grew tame before him. He had a son, Siyamak, and Ahriman envied him and sent his own son, the Black Div, with an army; Siyamak went out to fight him without armour and the div tore him open. Gayomart mourned a year, until Surush came and bade him take vengeance, and his grandson Hushang led an army of fairies and beasts, killed the Black Div and cut off his head; then Gayomart died.

The idea his story turns on is that the human being is the place where death enters creation and the place from which life continues. The destroyer reaches Gayomart and he dies, but his seed, purified by the sun's light, puts forth the plant from which all people come, which is why, looking at the darkness, he says that mankind will all be of his race. In the Zoroastrian books he is the first to hear Ohrmazd's word and accept it, and the first to rise at Frashokereti: the first of the living, the first of the dead and the first to stand up again.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. The Avestan name is gaya marətan, "mortal life" or "the mortal living one". The first part, gaya, is life, and in Arabic it is ḥayāh, life, and ḥayy, living, from the root ḥ-y-y: ḥayiya, he lived. In the Juthoor table ḥ belongs with ʿ, kh and gh to one group that other languages render as h, k or g, or drop. The second part, marətan, comes from the verb mar-, "to die": the t after it marks the participle and the n is a suffix, so what remains of the root is m and r, the letters of Arabic marʾ, which Lane gives as a man, a human being, whence imruʾ, a man, and imraʾa, a woman. In the same sense the Iranian verb itself became the word for a human being in Persian: mard, man, and mardum, people. On this reading Gayomart is "the living man": the first living being to become a man, and the first man to die.

Linguistic Root

Forms of the name

Bartholomae's Altiranisches Wörterbuch gives gaya- as life, lifetime, the conduct of life, and gives it again as the name of the first man, usually joined to marətan-, the name meaning "life" or "human life". He gives marətan- as an adjective, mortal, and as a noun, man, and derives it from a participle of the verb mar-, "to die", comparing Persian mard. Yasht 13.87 celebrates the fravashi of Gayomart, who first listened to the thought and teaching of Ahura Mazda, and from whom Ahura formed the race of the Aryan nations.

Life and ḥayy

Lane: ḥayiya and ḥayya, he lived; ḥayāh, life, the contrary of death; ḥayy, living, the contrary of dead. The Avestan gaya meets the Arabic in its whole sense and in the y after the first letter. The first letter is ḥ in Arabic and g in Avestan; in the Juthoor table ḥ belongs to the four throat letters, ʿ, ḥ, kh and gh, which European languages render as h, drop, or turn into g or k. The Arab writers themselves spelled the name with j, Jayūmart, keeping the g as j.

Mortal and marʾ

Lane: marʾ is a man, a human being, or a man as opposed to a child or a woman; also imruʾ, with the feminine imraʾa, a woman. The reading takes m and r from marətan, leaves the t and the n because in Avestan they are suffixes, and leaves the final hamza of marʾ because it does not appear in Persian, as the hamza of dh-r-ʾ does not appear in the name of Zal. The two words meet in the thing they name, the human being, and part in the reason for the name: Avestan named man after the death that befalls him, while Arabic marʾ has no sense of death, and Arabic death is the root m-w-t. On the Amesha Spentas page the same letters after the negation in Amərətāt, immortality, are read from mart, barren land; the reading of Gayomart takes the same root from marʾ, which makes it a name for man.

Other readings

The Encyclopaedia Iranica records that Hoffmann and Boyce set Gayomart beside the Vedic Mārtāṇḍa as the remains of a shared Indo-Iranian myth of the origin of man. It notes that the Dēnkard calls him gilšāh, "king of clay", while another Pahlavi text calls him garšāh, "king of the mountain", that Muslim historians use both, and that Yarshater took gil for a misreading of gar. Many Muslim historians, Ṭabarī among them, identify Gayomart with Adam.

Key Mythic Narratives

Gayomart in the Zoroastrian books

The Dēnkard adds that Ohrmazd made him the first prophet to carry his word to men, and since he had no people to preach to, the word was revealed after him to Mashya and then to their son Siyamak. The Dēnkard and the Bundahishn give his line as Mashya and Mashyana, then Siyamak, then Fravak, then Hushang. Ṭabarī preserves a saying of his: heed what is said, not who says it.

The reckoning

The last chapter of the Bundahishn sets time at twelve thousand years: three thousand in the spiritual state, three thousand that Gayomart and the ox lived in the world without an enemy, then the adversary rushed in and Gayomart lived thirty years in tribulation, and thirty years after that Mashya and Mashyana grew up.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Persian myths reads the struggle between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu as a struggle between the settled farmer and whatever ruins his crops and herds: drought, pests, disease and raids. Gayomart's story in the Bundahishn stands in the middle of that struggle in the same order: Ahriman falls on the water, the earth, the plants, the ox and then man, spreading vermin and withering the plants. The semitic essay reads Ahriman from haram, the decrepitude that wears creation down slowly. That is what he does to Gayomart: he cannot kill him at once, so he sends want, pain, hunger and disease upon him, and Gayomart lasts thirty years and then dies.

The Encyclopaedia Iranica says Gayomart's body was made from earth, that is from Spandarmad, and his seed from the light of the sky. The story returns to these two sources when he dies: the sun's light purifies his seed, the earth receives it, people come from the meeting of the two, and his form goes back to the sun.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The closest story is that of Ymir in the Norse myths. Gylfaginning says Ymir, the first living being, lived with a first cow, Auðhumla, who fed him from four rivers of her milk, as Gayomart lived with the primal ox on the two banks of the river. It says Ymir sweated as he slept and a man and a woman grew under his left arm; over Gayomart Ohrmazd brings a sweat before the assault, and from his seed the first man and woman grow. Then Ymir is killed and his members become the world, and the metals come from Gayomart's members, which is what the cosmic body pattern gathers.

In Rigveda 10.90 the gods offer Purusha, the first man, as a sacrifice, and people come from his body in their orders, as all people come from Gayomart's seed and he says they will all be of his race. In China the body of Pangu becomes the mountains and rivers. The difference is that the members of Ymir, Purusha and Pangu become the world, while Gayomart is made after the world, so his body yields people and metals, not sky and earth.

Ṭabarī and many other historians identify Adam with Gayomart himself. Both come from the earth in their stories: Adam from dust, Gayomart's body from Spandarmad, the spirit of the earth. After both, death enters their offspring: Gayomart dies by Ahriman's assault, and death is decreed for Adam and his descendants after the eating from the tree. The stories of the first making of humans are gathered in the creation of humans. Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Gayōmart"; Genesis 3:19.