Azhi Dahaka
Mythological Narrative
In the Avesta, Azhi Dahaka is a dragon with three heads, three mouths, and six eyes, master of a thousand wiles, the mightiest druj that Angra Mainyu fashioned to destroy the world of the righteous. The Aban Yasht tells how he sacrificed a hundred horses, a thousand oxen, and ten thousand sheep to the water goddess Anahita, praying to empty the seven regions of the earth of men, and was refused; the hero Thraetaona then sacrificed to the same goddess and won the power to overcome him. The Pahlavi books foretell his end: at the close of time he will break his bonds and devour a third of men and cattle before the revived hero Keresaspa strikes him down.
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh remade the dragon as Zahhak, the most famous tyrant in Persian literature. An Arab prince seduced by the devil Eblis into killing his own father, Zahhak was then served by the disguised fiend as a cook, who asked only to kiss his shoulders in reward — and from each kissed shoulder sprang a black snake that grew back when cut, quieted only by a daily meal of the brains of two young men. Zahhak seized the throne of Jamshid, and for a thousand years his kitchens consumed the youth of Persia two by two. The blacksmith Kaveh, who had lost seventeen of eighteen sons, raised his leather apron on a spear-point in revolt — the Derafsh Kaviani, later the sacred banner of Persian kingship — and the rebels crowned Fereydun, heir of Jamshid's line. Fereydun felled the serpent king with his ox-headed mace and, commanded by a divine messenger not to kill him, nailed and chained him deep in a cave of Mount Damavand; folk tradition hears the volcano's sulfur vents as the dragon's breathing.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## In the Avesta
The Zamyad Yasht calls Azhi Dahaka 'the three-mouthed, the three-headed, the six-eyed, who had a thousand senses, that most powerful, fiendish Druj', created by Angra Mainyu against the material world. He struggles with Atar, the fire, for possession of the royal Glory, and is smitten by Thraetaona, heir of the Athwya clan. The Vendidad names the land of Varena as the place 'for which was born Thraetaona, who smote Azi Dahaka', and the Greater Bundahishn, as Darmesteter noted, identifies that land with Mount Damavand, where the dragon was bound with iron bonds. The Aban Yasht says that he sacrificed to Anahita, asking to empty the seven regions of the earth of men, and that she refused him.
## Zahhak
In Ferdowsi's Shahnameh the dragon has become a human king, Zahhak, whose shoulders sprout two serpents after the Devil kisses them and who feeds the serpents on human brains through a reign of a thousand years, until Fereydun, the epic form of Thraetaona, overthrows him and chains him in a cave in Mount Damavand.
## At the end of time
Middle Persian tradition holds that near the end of the world Dahag will break his bonds and ravage creation until the hero Keresaspa is raised to kill him, one of the events that lead to the final renovation.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Azhi Dahaka.
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