Saoshyant

Summary

Saoshyant is, in Zoroastrian religion, the saviour who comes at the end of time to raise the dead and renew the world; his own name in the Avesta is Astvat-ereta. He is born from the seed of Zarathustra himself. The Bundahishn says that Zarathustra went in to his wife three times and each time his seed fell to the ground; the angel Neryosang took its brilliance and strength and handed it to Anahita to keep until she joins it with a mother at the appointed time, and 99,999 guardian spirits of the righteous watch over it so that the demons cannot harm it. From this seed three sons are born, each at the head of a millennium, and the last is Saoshyant. The Avesta calls his mother a maiden named "she who overcomes all", because she will bear the one who overcomes the malice of demons and men, and says he will come up out of Lake Kasaoya in Sistan.

As his coming draws near, people give up eating meat, then milk, then plants, until they live on water, and then they live ten years without food and do not die. When he comes he raises the dead. Zarathustra had asked Ohrmazd: how does a body form again that the wind has carried off and the water swept away? Ohrmazd answered: I raised the sky without columns, set up the earth, made the sun and moon run their courses, made grain sown in the earth come back multiplied, and fashioned the child in its mother's womb, and every one of these was harder than raising the dead. When the time comes I will ask the bone back from the earth, the blood from the water, the hair from the plants and the life from fire, since they were handed to them at the first creation. The bones of Gayomard, the first man, rise first, then those of the first couple, then the rest of humankind, within fifty-seven years.

Then all people gather, each sees his good deeds and his evil deeds, and the wicked man stands out among them like a white sheep among black ones. The metal in the mountains melts and runs over the earth like a river, and everyone passes through it: to the righteous it feels like warm milk, to the wicked like molten metal, and all are purified. Saoshyant performs the last sacrifice: he slaughters the ox Hadhayosh and makes from its fat and the White Haoma a drink that makes everyone who drinks it immortal. Ohrmazd then seizes Ahriman, who flees back through the hole he came in by; the serpent is burned in the metal, hell is made pure, and the earth becomes an iceless, slopeless plain.

The idea the story turns on is that the end of time gives back what was made at its beginning. Bone, blood, hair and life are things held in trust by earth, water, plants and fire, and each returns its trust to its owner; the first man is the first to rise, and the world returns to what it was before Ahriman's attack. The saviour himself is of the prophet's line, so the word Zarathustra spoke returns in his son to finish the work. The Zamyad Yasht says that the kingly Glory that Thraetaona, the later Fereydun, bore when Aži Dahāka was slain will go with Saoshyant when he makes the world never age, never die and never decay; the Lie perishes, and Angra Mainyu bows and flees, powerless.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the Persian essay sets him beside the Mahdi and the Messiah without reading the word. Saošiiant is a future active participle: its final -nt is the participle ending and the -šiia- before it marks the future; remove them and the root sau- remains, s and w. That is Arabic sawwā and istawā. In Lane sawwāhu is "he made it even, level, plain", and "he made it complete, completed its make"; istawā al-rajul is "the man became full-grown, of full vigour"; and the Qur'an says "yes, We are able to nusawwiya his fingertips", to put the bones of his fingers together as they were. On this reading Saoshyant is "the one who makes whole and level", who gathers the bones, completes creation and makes the earth a level plain, which is what the text makes him: the one who raises the dead from their bones and levels the earth at the end of time.

Linguistic Root

Attested forms

Iranists derive Saošiiant from the verb sū- / sau-, which in Old Indic means "to swell, be strong, increase, prosper", and in Iranian came to mean "to benefit, be of use". The Farvardin Yasht explains the name itself: he is called Saoshyant because he will benefit the whole bodily world, and Astvat-ereta because, as a bodily and living creature, he will stand against the destruction of bodily creatures. The Pahlavi translation glosses it sūdōmand, "useful". In the Gathas Zarathustra called himself and his companions saošiiant, "benefactors", and only later did the name belong to the saviour of the end of time alone.

Sawwā and istawā

Lane, under s-w-y: sawwāhu, "he made it even, level, plain", and "he made it symmetrical, complete in make"; sawwaynā ʿalā Ruqayya, "we buried Ruqayya and made the earth of the grave level over her". Istawā al-rajul is "the man attained his full strength", full-grown and vigorous. The root thus holds both senses the Iranian verb carries: strength and completeness in istawā, and the setting right and levelling of creation in sawwā. S is s, w is w, and the final y of the Arabic root is a weak letter answering the long vowel of sū-.

Frašō.kərəti

The Avestan name of the renovation is frašō.kərəti, "making the world wonderful" or "excellent", Middle Persian frašegird. Plutarch reports from the Persians that at the destined time the earth will become "a level plain", and people will have one way of life and speak one tongue, as the Bundahishn says of the level earth.

Key Mythic Narratives

The three saviours

The Bundahishn has three sons born from Zarathustra's seed: Ushedar at the head of the tenth millennium, Ushedarmah at the head of the eleventh, and Saoshyant at its end. In each of the first two millennia goodness grows for a time and then declines, and the renovation is completed only by the third. In Ushedar's millennium comes the winter of the sorcerer Malkus, which destroys people and beasts, and the world is repopulated from Jamshid's enclosure. Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Saošyant", "Jamšid".

The immortal helpers

The Bundahishn says that immortal men wait in hidden places to help Saoshyant: Peshotan son of Vishtasp in Kangdez, Urvatadnar son of Zarathustra in Jamshid's enclosure, and with them fifteen men and fifteen maidens. The hero Sam lies asleep on a plain in Kabulistan, guarded by the Glory, until Zahhak breaks loose from his bonds in Mount Damavand; then Sam rises and kills him.

Symbolic Reading

The Persian essay places Saoshyant in its table of concepts it sees passing from Zoroastrianism into later religions, setting him beside the Messiah in Hebrew and the Mahdi and the Messiah in Islam, and the renovation beside the Day of Resurrection, a match it calls structural. The rereading essay reads the renovation as an early vision of what is now called progress: the river of molten metal as industry, immortality as medicine, the levelling of mountains as mining.

The ancient text makes the renovation a return to the first world: Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that the paradise Yima ruled is reclaimed at the end, when there is no old age and no death. In the Bundahishn food dwindles before the resurrection until people live on water, and then Saoshyant gives them the drink of immortality, so the end begins with giving up eating and ends with a drink after which nothing more is needed.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The Norse gods make the world from the body of Ymir: his flesh the earth, his blood the sea, his bones the mountains, his hair the trees. Grímnismál 40. In India the gods divide the body of Puruṣa, and his eye becomes the sun, his breath the wind. The resurrection of the Bundahishn runs the same road backwards: Ohrmazd asks the bone back from the earth, the blood from the water, the hair from the plants, and the world becomes a body again. This is the cosmic body pattern read from its end.

After Ragnarök the earth rises green from the sea a second time and Baldr returns from the house of the dead, as after the renovation the earth becomes a new plain that does not age. But the Norse world burns and rises again with no saviour, while the Zoroastrian world is purified by molten metal at the hand of the prophet's son.