Summary
In the Avesta Sraoša is a word meaning "hearing and obedience", and the name of one of the greatest beings the Zoroastrians worship; in the Gathas Zarathustra calls him "mightiest of all". After Islam his name lived on in Iran as the name of an angel, Surōš. He has no counterpart in the Rigveda, so Iranists hold him to be purely Iranian.
The fullest account of him is his hymn, Yasna 57. He was the first in Ahura Mazda's creation to spread the sacred bundle of twigs and worship with it, and the first to chant the five Gathas of Zarathustra. He built a mighty house for the poor among men and women. His own house stands on the highest peak of Mount Haraiti, with a thousand pillars, lit from within and studded with stars without, and there Haoma worshipped him. Four shining white horses draw his chariot, with hoofs of horn covered in gold, faster than wind, rain, birds or the arrow in flight, carrying him from east to west. His greatest work is at night: after the sun sets he raises his weapon and guards the whole material world; he strikes Aēšma, the demon of Wrath with the bloody club, a wound that bleeds; and he has not slept since the two Spirits, the beneficent and the evil, made their creations, but fights the demons all day and all night, and they flee from him into darkness. Three times by day and three times by night he comes down to the central region of the earth, a sharp axe in his hand to split the demons' skulls.
Sraosha wakes the cock. In the Vendidad Zarathustra asks who carries out Sraosha's command, and Ahura Mazda answers: the bird Parōdarš, "he who foresees the coming dawn", who lifts his voice at the end of the night: arise, O men, and pray; here comes Bushyasta the long-handed, the demon of sleep, who lulls the world back to sleep as soon as it has woken. It is Sraosha who wakes this bird.
He also has work after death. In the Pahlavi books Sraosha guards the dead person's soul for three days, while it hovers threatened by demons, then at the dawn of the fourth day leads it to the Chinvat Bridge, where he sits with Mithra and Rashnu to judge it. At the end of time he accompanies Ohrmazd at the judgment of souls and strikes down his chief enemy, Wrath.
The idea his stories turn on is that the one who hears the word and obeys it is the one who stays awake while people sleep. Night in these hymns is the demons' hour, the hour of wrath and of the sleep that takes people from their prayers; Sraosha's work begins when the sun sets and ends when the cock crows. Obedience for him is not sitting still: he is the strongest and swiftest of youths, with a club and an axe, guarding the house, village, tribe and country where he is honoured and fed, and guarding the soul in its first three nights after death, while it hovers threatened by demons.
We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. It is a reading proposed on the method, since neither Persian essay mentions him. The nominative is sraošō, whose final -ō is a case ending, and Iranists derive sraoša from the verb sru, "to hear", with an added š. Remove the ending and the suffix and srao- remains: s, r and w, the letters of Arabic sarā. In Lane surā is travelling by night, in its first part, its middle and its end, and a proverb says "they went away like the night-going of a hedgehog", because the hedgehog goes all the night without sleeping. On this reading Sraosha is al-sārī, the one who goes by night and does not sleep, which is what his hymn makes him: he guards creation after sunset and has not slept since the two Spirits made their worlds.
Linguistic Root
Attested forms
| Form | Where |
|---|---|
| sraoša, Gathic səraoša | Avestan, as the god's name and a common noun for obedience |
| sraošō | nominative |
| səraošānē | a Gathic verb form, "I shall be obedient" |
| śruṣṭi | Vedic Sanskrit, "obedience", from the same verb |
| Srōš | Middle Persian |
| Surōš | New Persian, the angel's name |
Malandra explains in the Encyclopaedia Iranica that the verb sru first meant "to hear" and then "to obey", and that the same root gives Avestan words for punishment and for the one who enforces obedience and discipline, a name also given to the cock. At root the name is hearing followed by action.
Surā
Lane: sarā, yasrī, verbal nouns surā, masrā, sarya, "he journeyed, or travelled, by night", through the night in general, or, according to Abū Zayd, in its first part, its middle and its last part; asrā means the same. A proverb says "they went away like the night-going of a hedgehog", because the hedgehog goes all the night, not sleeping. Then the root of a tree is said to sarā when it creeps along beneath the ground, poison when it pervades a body, and anxiety when it comes upon a man by night.
The sounds: s is s, r is r, and the w of srao- is a weak letter answered by the y of sarā; w and y alternate at the end of the Arabic root itself, for Lane gives both sarawtu al-thawb and saraytuhu, "I threw off the garment". The š drops because the Iranian analysis makes it a suffix, and the final -ō drops as the nominative ending. The sense of hearing and obeying, which is the origin of the Iranian word, is not in sarā: the reading reads the name by what its bearer does.
Key Mythic Narratives
With Mithra in battle
In Mithra's hymn Mithra strikes fear into the army of covenant-breakers, Rashnu strikes a counter-fear into them, and Sraosha blows them away on every side. Mithra yokes his horses to his chariot with the powerful Sraosha beside him, and Sraosha drives at his right hand, Rashnu at his left.
Guardian of the body and lord of the material world
In the Pahlavi books his rank rises until he stands close to Ohrmazd in rule over the earth: the Iranian Bundahishn says that Ohrmazd is the protector of the soul in the spiritual world and Srōš the protector of the body in the material world, and that he holds the material world through the protection Ohrmazd commanded. Earthly kings bear a title named after him, "column of glory of the material world".
Smasher of the obstacle
Among Sraosha's epithets in his hymn is verethrājan, "smasher of resistance", the title that became in Iran the name of the god of victory, Verethragna, and in India Indra's title as slayer of Vṛtra. Avestan text of Yasna 57.19; Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Sraoša".
Symbolic Reading
The Persian essay reads the conflict between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu as a conflict between the settled farming community, which tills the land, raises cattle and keeps water and fire, and what destroys it: drought, pests and raids. In his hymn Sraosha is the night guard of that community: "far from this house, this village, this tribe and this country the evil and destructive terrors depart" wherever Sraosha is honoured and fed.
The story also shows a piece of ordinary life: a house with a fire that someone must tend before dawn, a prayer that must be said when the cock crows, and a sleep that tempts people to stay in bed. The divine guard here works in the hours when people need someone to wake them.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
In the North Heimdall needs less sleep than a bird, hears grass growing and guards the road to the gods' home; Sraosha, the hearer, has not slept since the world was made and guards creation by night. Among the Greeks Hermes leads souls to the underworld, and in Egypt Anubis takes the dead man by the hand to the balance; Sraosha leads the soul to the bridge where Rashnu weighs its deeds, a witness of the descent to the underworld. In India Yama guards the road of the dead with his two dogs, and the Chinvat Bridge has two dogs too.