Ancient text
The Zend-Avesta, Part 1: The Vendidad, Darmesteter, 1880
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The scripture of ancient Persia contains a story of a king told to build an underground enclosure to save life from a killing winter. This is the text it comes from, in a scholar's 1880 translation.
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Why we can share it: archive.org metadata: possible-copyright-status NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT, copyright-region US; published 1880 (Darmesteter died 1894).
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PersonYima (Jamshid) and the VaraWarned of killing winters, the first king of the Iranian tradition built an underground enclosure and filled it with the seeds of the finest people, animals and plants. Inside, the sun and stars rise and set only once a year; some speculative readers say that matches the far north. What was this refuge really describing?TextBundahishnAccording to this Zoroastrian book of creation, the first human couple grew out of the ground as a single rhubarb plant. The same book lays out history as twelve thousand years in four ages, beginning with an invasion from beyond the sky; it was compiled in the 8th and 9th centuries CE. What older lost texts did it draw on?BeingAhriman (Angra Mainyu)In the Zoroastrian creation story, evil does not creep in, it attacks from outside. Ahriman pierces the sky, leaps into a perfect, motionless world, spreads darkness and kills the first man; in one version he even tore out of the womb first to claim a promised kingship. What happens in a world whose history is fixed at twelve thousand years?
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