Mashya and Mashyana

Summary

Mashya and Mashyana are the first man and the first woman of Persian myth, the parents from whom all the races of mankind branched. The Bundahishn tells that Gayomart, the first man, gave forth his seed as he died; the light of the sun purified it, the earth received a portion, and after forty years in the earth a one-stemmed rhubarb plant grew from it. After fifteen years, one for each of its fifteen leaves, Mashya and Mashyana came out of it, each with arms resting behind on the shoulders, joined together and alike, their waists so closely connected that it was not clear which was the male and which the female. Then they changed from the shape of a plant into the shape of humans, and the breath, which is the soul, went into them.

Ohrmazd said to them: you are man, you are the ancestry of the world, I have created you perfect in devotion; perform the law, think good thoughts, speak good words, do good deeds, and worship no demons. Their first thought was that each should please the other; their first deed was to go out and wash themselves; their first words were that Ohrmazd had created the water, the earth, the plants, the animals, the stars, the moon and the sun. Then antagonism rushed into their minds and corrupted them, and they said that the evil spirit had created all these things; that was the first lie, and through it they became wicked. They went thirty days without food, clothed in herbage, then went into the wilderness, found a white-haired goat and sucked her milk with their mouths, and Mashya said: my delight was great before I drank the milk, and it is greater now that my vile body has drunk it. That was the second lie, and the demons took away the taste of food until only one part in a hundred remained.

Thirty days later they found a fat sheep and slaughtered it; they drew fire out of lote-plum and box wood under the guidance of the heavenly angels, blew on it with their mouths, fed it with dry grass, palm leaves and myrtle, and roasted the sheep. They dropped three handfuls of meat into the fire, saying "this is the share of the fire", and tossed a piece to the sky, saying "this is the share of the angels"; a vulture carried some of it away, and a dog ate the first meat. They clothed themselves in skins, then wove garments; they dug a pit in the earth, got iron out of it, beat it with a stone until it had an edge, cut wood with it and built a shelter from the sun. Then the demons grew more oppressive, and the two struck each other and tore their hair; for fifty years they had no desire for children, then desire came, and Mashyana said: "Brother Mashya!" Nine months later twins were born to them, a male and a female, and from the delight of offspring the mother devoured one and the father the other, so Ohrmazd took that delight away from them, that a child might be nursed and live. Then seven pairs were born to them, each a brother and his sister-wife, among them Siyamak and Nasak, and from their line the races of men branched out.

The idea the story turns on is that the human being begins as one and becomes two, begins as a plant and becomes human by speech, food and work. They came out of a single stem in which male and female could not be told apart, and then each of them wished to please the other. Their first words were true and their next were false; their first food was milk without fire, then meat on the fire; their first clothing was grass, then skins, then woven cloth. Everything people have, fire, clothing, iron and offering, begins with them, and so do lying and the loss of taste in food.

We read the names in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. Avestan mašya is the mortal, the human being; Bartholomae enters it under Old Persian martiya, man, Avestan š standing where Old Persian has rt. The name thus means "the human being", from the verb mar- read in Gayomart's name, and the two letters of its root, m and r, are those of Arabic marʾ, a man, a human being. Mashyana is the same word with a feminine ending, as Arabic imraʾa, woman, is imruʾ, man, with the feminine t. On this reading the first couple are "a man and a woman", named from one word as they came from one stem, as Adam says in Genesis: "she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man".

Linguistic Root

Forms of the names

Bartholomae treats Avestan mašya- and Old Persian martiya- as one word, meaning mortal, human being, man, derives it from the verb mar-, "to die", and records mašyaka- for a human being as well. Avestan š stands where martiya has rt, the r inside it.

Man and woman

Lane: marʾ is a man, a human being, or a man as opposed to a child or a woman; also imruʾ; the feminine is imraʾa, marʾa and mara, and imraʾa may mean a perfect woman. The reading takes m and r from the names, the r hidden in the Avestan š, and sets aside the t of martiya, which marks the participle, the suffixes -ya and -āna, and the hamza of marʾ. Middle Persian makes the name feminine with a suffix as Arabic does with t. The difference noted under Gayomart remains: the Iranian verb means "to die", and Arabic marʾ has no sense of death.

Man and woman in Genesis

In Hebrew the woman is named from the man's name in Adam's story: "she shall be called ʾiššā, because she was taken out of ʾīš." Both stories name the first woman from the first man's name and make them of one body: Eve from Adam's rib, Mashya and Mashyana from a single stem.

Key Mythic Narratives

The tree whose fruit is mankind

The Bundahishn says that in their likeness a tree grew up whose fruit was the ten varieties of man. It divides the line of Fravak son of Siyamak into fifteen races; nine crossed the ocean on the back of the ox Sarsaok to the six other regions, and six remained in the central one. Among these six were Tazh and Tazhak, who went to the plain of the Tazhikan, the Arabs; Hushang and Guzhak, from whom came the Iranians; and a third pair from whom came the people of Mazandaran. The peoples of Turan, Rum, China and India are also of Fravak's line.

At the end of time

At the resurrection Gayomart's bones rise first, then those of Mashya and Mashyana, then the rest of mankind. The Bundahishn says that when the two grew up from the earth they first fed on water, then plants, then milk, then meat, and that at the end of time people give up food in the reverse order.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Persian myths reads Jamshid as the memory of the first agricultural revolution: the first crafts, dwellings and division of labour. The Bundahishn sets an older stage before Jamshid in the story of the first couple and arranges what people learned in order: eating and wearing grass, then the goat's milk, then slaughtering a sheep and kindling fire, then skins and weaving, then extracting iron and building a shelter. At each step the text names who takes a share: the fire, the angels, the vulture and the dog.

The Bundahishn puts the first lie in speech about the creator: first they said Ohrmazd made everything, then they ascribed creation to Ahriman. The first sin of the first couple in Persia is a false word; in Genesis it is eating from the tree.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The closest story is that of Ask and Embla in the Norse myths. Völuspá says three of the gods found Ask and Embla on the land, two trees without breath or spirit, and gave them breath, spirit and blood. Mashya and Mashyana are a plant into which breath enters and makes it human. In both stories the human being is a plant waiting for breath; the difference is that Ask and Embla are two separate trees, Mashya and Mashyana a single stem.

In Genesis Eve is made from Adam's rib, the two become "one flesh", words tempt them into wrongdoing, and then "the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins, and clothed them". In the Bundahishn the couple come from the body of a single plant, words corrupt them, and then "first, a clothing of skins covered them".

In Japan Izanagi and Izanami, the first couple, marry, and their first child is a leech-like child, Hiruko, set adrift on the water in a reed boat, as the first twins of Mashya and Mashyana perish. In China Fuxi and Nüwa marry as brother and sister, as Mashyana calls her husband "brother" and as each pair of their children is a brother and a sister. The stories of the first making of humans are gathered in the creation of humans.