Vara of Jamshid

Summary

The Vara of Jamshid, called vara in the Avesta and war ī Jamkard, "the enclosure Jam made", in the Pahlavi books, is the sealed building in which Yima, the later Jamshid, kept the seeds of life safe from a killing winter. Its story is in the second chapter of the Vendidad. Ahura Mazda gathered the gods and Yima gathered the best of mortals in the land of the Aryans, and Ahura Mazda said to Yima: evil winters will fall on the world, with fierce frost, and snow will lie deep on the highest mountain tops, so that the beasts will take shelter in dwellings under the ground. Before that winter the land bore grass; once the snow melts and the water floods it, the footprint of a sheep will be a wonder.

So he told him to make a vara, a square enclosure each side as long as a riding-ground, and to bring into it the seeds of sheep and oxen, of people, dogs and birds, and of red blazing fires; to make water flow in it in a bed a mile long, to settle birds on greenery that never fades with food that never fails, and to build houses, balconies and courtyards. He was to bring the seeds of the best men and women, the best cattle, the tallest trees and the sweetest fruits, two of every kind. No hunchback, no impotent man, no madman, no liar, no envious man, no leper may enter, nor anyone bearing a brand of Angra Mainyu. In its largest part he was to lay nine streets holding a thousand seeds of men and women, six in the middle part holding six hundred, three in the smallest holding three hundred; then seal it with a golden seal and give it a door and a window that shines of itself. Yima asked: how shall I make it? Ahura Mazda said: crush the earth with your heel and knead it with your hands as the potter kneads clay. And he did.

The people of the enclosure do not see the stars, the moon or the sun; they have created lights and uncreated lights, and a year passes for them like a single day. Every fortieth year two children, a male and a female, are born to each couple, and so with the beasts, and they live the happiest life. A bird named Karshipta brought the religion to them, and their lords are Urvatadnar son of Zarathustra and Zarathustra himself.

The idea the story turns on is that the world is kept by a small chosen sample shut away until destruction has passed. The king who enlarged the earth three times when it grew too crowded now builds a narrow, closed place and chooses who goes in: the best of people, beasts and plants, two by two, without blemish. What he keeps is not only survivors but the seeds from which the world is made again, which is why the Pahlavi tradition says the world is repopulated from this enclosure after the winter of the sorcerer Malkus at the end of time, and that Zarathustra's son lives in it awaiting the call to help Saoshyant. Bundahishn 29.5 and 32.5; Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Jamšid".

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the Persian essay mentions the enclosure without reading its word. Vara ends in the Avestan stem vowel; remove it and var remains, v and r. That is Arabic wārā: in Lane wārāhu is "he hid it, concealed it, or covered it", and min warāʾi warāʾ is "from behind a thing covering or concealing". On this reading the enclosure is "the concealer", the place that covers and hides life, which is what the text makes it: a sealed building from which no star or sun is seen, and which the Bundahishn places under the earth.

Linguistic Root

Attested forms

Iranists take vara- to be some kind of enclosure or fortress, compared with Latin vallum, from which comes English wall, and some have taken it to be a cave. It is the same word as Vedic vala, the cave that Indra splits open to free the cattle shut inside.

Wārā

Arabic w answers Avestan v, both in the labial group of the Juthoor laws; r is r; and the final ā of wārā is a weak letter answering the Avestan vowel. The sense of covering in wārā is close to the sense Iranists give: a fence that surrounds and screens, or a cave that hides what is in it. In the same root warā al-zand is said of a fire-stick that gives out its fire, and among the things the enclosure keeps are "red blazing fires".

Key Mythic Narratives

Where the enclosure is

The Bundahishn places Jamshid's enclosure among hidden places on earth, each ruled by an immortal, and says it lies in the middle of Pars, in Sruva, beneath Mount Yimakan. It says that Urvatadnar son of Zarathustra was a farmer and is the chief of the enclosure that is under the earth.

The winter of Malkus

The Pahlavi books make the winter for which the enclosure was built the winter of the sorcerer Malkus, and say it will return in the millennium of Ushedar, the first of Zarathustra's sons to come: the faithful will tell people to store food for three years in which no rain falls, then the winter sets in for three years with only brief breaks, and in the fourth snow falls for seven months without stopping, people and beasts perish, and the world is repopulated from the enclosure. Some scholars think the enclosure and the winter of Malkus were two separate stories joined by the Pahlavi commentary; others think the link is older, because the demon's name occurs in an Avestan fragment in words close to those of the Vendidad.

Symbolic Reading

The Persian essay gives the enclosure two readings: an agricultural one that makes it the first granary, keeping seeds and beasts through the winter, and a geological one that makes it a memory of the last ice age, setting it beside Noah's ark, the seed of life kept from destruction. The text itself keeps in the enclosure what a granary, a farm and a village keep together: seeds, running water, pasture, fire and houses. The Avestan account does not name an ice age.

The divine command chooses those who enter without blemish, counts houses and streets by number, and gives the enclosure a door and a seal. It is an ordered community whose number and each member's place are known, which is what Yima does in all his stories: he orders people and gives them a place.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the flood stories Ea tells Utnapishtim to tear down his house, build a boat and make all living beings go up into it, and Manu carries in his ship the seven sages and the seeds of every kind, each kept apart. The enclosure keeps what the boat keeps, people, beasts and seeds, but it stands fixed in the ground and sealed, while the boat moves on the water. In Yima's story the water comes after the winter, when the snow melts and floods the land.

In the Norse myths the Great Winter comes before the end of the world, three winters with no summer between, and Líf and Lífþrasir hide in the wood of Hoddmímir, live on the dew, and from them the generations of people come afterwards. Both stories keep a couple or a community from the winter in a hidden place from which the world is refilled; they differ in that Yima builds his place with his own hands at Ahura Mazda's command, while the Norse pair hide in a wood.

Yima's kneading of the clay and building of the enclosure are among the crafts that place him among the culture heroes.