Verethragna

Summary

Verethragna is the ancient Iranian god of victory, and his Avestan name is a word meaning "the smiting of resistance" or "the breaking of the obstacle". In Middle Persian it became Warahrān and then Wahrām, and in New Persian Bahrām, the name of six Sasanian kings and the name the Pahlavi books give to the planet Mars. The fourteenth of the hymns of praise, the Bahram Yasht, is his.

His hymn opens with a question asked ten times: Zarathustra asked Ahura Mazda, who is the best-armed of the heavenly gods? and he answers: Verethragna. Then Verethragna comes to Zarathustra ten times, each time in a different shape: a strong, beautiful wind; a bull with yellow ears and golden horns; a white horse with a golden caparison; a burden-bearing camel in rut, sharp-toothed, who sees through the dark of night; a sharp-tusked wild boar that kills at one stroke; a shining, clear-eyed youth of fifteen; a bird of prey, the swiftest of birds, who overtakes an arrow in flight and flies up at the first break of dawn wishing the night to be no more; a wild ram with curled horns; a fighting buck with sharp horns; and a bright, beautiful man holding a sword with a golden blade. In each shape he says: "I am the strongest in strength, the most victorious in victory, the most glorious in glory, the best-healing in health-giving." Then he gives Zarathustra strength of arm and health of body, the sight of the fish that perceives under water a ripple finer than a hair, the sight of the horse that in the dark of night sees a hair on the ground and knows whether it is from the head or the tail, and the sight of the vulture that sees a piece of flesh from nine districts away.

Then he teaches him the secret of the feather. Zarathustra asks: if many men who hate me cast a curse on me, what is the remedy? Ahura Mazda answers: take a feather of the bird Vārəŋgan, rub your body with it, and with it curse your enemies back. Whoever holds a bone or a feather of that bird, no one can smite or rout him. When two armies meet, throw four feathers in the way, and victory will stand with whichever side first sacrifices to Verethragna. That bird was ridden by the hero Thraetaona when he struck down the three-headed dragon Aži Dahāka. Bahram Yasht 14.34–46.

The idea the story turns on is that victory is not one hero's moment but a force that comes in every shape of strength, wind, bull, horse, camel, boar, youth, bird, ram, buck and armed man, and goes to whoever sacrifices to it rightly, and takes back its healing from those who kill and shed blood. His name keeps the old word for the obstacle, vərəθra, the same word that became in India the serpent Vṛtra who held back the waters. India made the obstacle a dragon and gave Indra the title of its slayer, vṛtrahan; Iran made the smiting of the obstacle itself a god. Gnoli, in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, holds that the older deed was the breaking of an obstacle that held back the flow of the waters, one of the witnesses of the gods' fight with sea and dragon. Bahram Yasht 14.51–56; Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Bahrām".

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 Avestan vərəθraγna has two parts: vərəθra, the word in Vṛtra's name, which his page reads as Arabic warṭa, the covered place one cannot get out of; and γna, from the verb jan, "to strike". So the name is "the smiting of the warṭa": the breaking of what holds and shuts in. Later the name became Wahrām and Bahrām in Persian, its h what remains of the old θr, as Miθra became Mihr. The letters of this later form are the letters of Arabic bahara: in Lane baharahu is "he overcame him, overpowered him, surpassed him", and bahara al-qamaru al-nujūma, "the moon overcame the stars with its light". On this reading Bahrām is al-bāhir, the one who overcomes and rises above others, which is what the god says of himself in his hymn: "I am the most victorious in victory".

Linguistic Root

Attested forms

Bahara

Lane: baharahu, yabharuhu, bahr, "he overcame him; overpowered him; subdued him; surpassed him; excelled him"; baharat fulānatu al-nisāʾa, "such a woman surpassed the other women in beauty"; bahara al-qamaru al-nujūma, "the moon overcame with its light the light of the stars"; baharat al-shamsu al-arḍa, "the light of the sun overspread the earth". Hence bahara also means "it shone brightly".

The road from the Avestan name to the New Persian one is attested in its forms: vərəθraγna, then Warahrān, then Wahrām, then Bahrām. The θ and r became h and r, as Miθra became Persian Mihr, and the initial w became b in New Persian. So the first three letters of Bahrām, b, h and r, are the letters of bahara in order, and the ā and m are what remains of the second element. But these letters are the shape of the name in later Persian, not in Avestan.

The second element

The second element γna comes from the verb jan, Sanskrit han, "to strike, to kill", and the same root, in the Bailly dictionary's division, makes the end of the name of Persephone, which her page reads as Arabic fanāʾ, "perishing". Avestan γ is pronounced as Arabic gh, and on the method we set beside it Arabic ghanima: in Lane ghanima al-shayʾ is "he took the thing as spoil", the Qur'an's "what you have taken as spoil" is what was taken in war, and the ghānim is the taker of spoil. On this view the victorious vərəθraγan is the one who takes as spoil what was held in the warṭa. But the m of ghanima has no counterpart, and the Avestan sense is striking, not spoil.

Key Mythic Narratives

With Mithra and Rashnu

Verethragna goes along the armies arrayed, with Mithra and Rashnu, asking: who lies to Mithra? who breaks his oath before Rashnu? to whom shall I in my might give sickness and death? In Mithra's hymn he runs before Mithra in the shape of a sharp-tusked wild boar that kills at one stroke.

The victorious fire

The adjective vərəθraγan, "victorious", was also said of fire, "the victorious fire". From it came the "fire of Warahrān" in the inscriptions of the priest Kerdīr in the third century CE, and then the Ātaš Bahrām, the highest grade of sacred fire among Zoroastrians, which after the Sasanians people took to be the fire of the god Bahrām. At first it was fire called victorious.

Herakles and Ares

In the Hellenistic period Verethragna came to be shown, among Iranians and their neighbours, in the shape of the Greek Herakles, a naked man with club and lion skin, and to be named with Ares. The inscription of King Antiochus I of Commagene at Nemrud Dağ, in the first century BCE, puts the three names together: Artagnes Herakles Ares. Beside the great highway at Bisotun a reclining Herakles carved in the rock is dated 148 BCE, and Iranists see in him Bahrām, protector of travellers. Sasanian kings wore on their crowns the wings of a bird of prey, the sign of the king's tie to his god Bahrām, first seen on the crown of Bahrām II.

After death

In the Pahlavi books Wahrām accompanies and guides the soul of the dead through the first three days until the dawn of the fourth, together with Sraosha and the good Wāy, and he came to be worshipped as the protector of travellers.

Symbolic Reading

The Persian essay reads the conflict between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu as a conflict between the settled farming community and what destroys it: drought, pests and raids by herders. Verethragna's hymn makes a promise in that sense: if people sacrifice to him rightly, "never will a hostile horde enter the Aryan countries, nor any plague, nor leprosy, nor venomous plants, nor the chariot of a foe, nor the uplifted spear of a foe". And it ends with the ox: "In the ox is our strength, in the ox is our need, in the ox is our speech, in the ox is our victory, in the ox is our food and our clothing, in the ox is tillage, that makes food grow for us." Victory in this hymn is the victory of people who plough and keep herds.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In India Indra's title vṛtrahan, slayer of Vṛtra, is Verethragna's own name in its Indian form: there the god kills the serpent who held back the waters, here the killing itself has become a god, and his hymn has no serpent in it. His ten shapes recall the forms of Viṣṇu in the Purāṇas, the avatars, though the shapes do not match. Tishtrya shares three of them: the youth of fifteen, the bull with golden horns and the white horse.

Among the Greeks he became Herakles and Ares in the Commagene inscription, and his planet Mars is the planet of Ares among the Greeks and of Nergal in Babylon. The feather of his bird, which heals and protects, resembles the feather of the Simurgh in the Shahnameh, rubbed on Rudabah's wound when Rostam was born, and his bird is ridden by Thraetaona when he strikes down Aži Dahāka.