Anahita
Anahita is the Old Persian form of the name of an Iranian goddess and appears in complete and earlier form as Aradvi Sura Anahita, the Avestan name of an Indo-Iranian cosmological figure venerated as the divinity of "the Waters" and hence associated with fertility, healing and wisdom. There is also a temple named Anahita in Iran. Aredvi Sura Anahita is Ardwisur Anahid in Middle and Modern Persian, and Anahit in Armenian. An iconic shrine sects of Aredvi Sura Anahita was, together with other shrine sects, "introduced apparently in the 4th century BCE and lasted until it was suppressed in the wake of an iconoclastic movement under the Sasanids." The symbol of goddess Anahita is the Lotus flower. Lotus Festival is an Iranian festival that is held on the end of the first week of July. Holding this festival at this time was probably based on the blooming of lotus flowers at the beginning of summer.
The Greek and Roman historians of classical antiquity either refer to her as Anaïtis or identify her with one of the divinities from their own pantheons. 270 Anahita, a silicaceous S-type asteroid, is named after her. Based on the development of her sect, she was described as a syncretistic goddess, who was composed of two independent elements. The first is a manifestation of the Indo-Iranian idea of the Heavenly River who provides the waters to the rivers and streams flowing in the earth while the second is that of a goddess of uncertain origin, though maintaining her own unique characteristics, who became associated with the sect of the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Inanna-Ishtar. According to one theory, this arose partly from a desire to make Anahita part of Zoroastrianism following the diffusion of her sect from the extreme northwest into the rest of Persia.
According to Herman Lommel, the proper name of the divinity in Indo-Iranian times was Sarasvatī, which also means "she who possesses waters". In Avestan, the name means "of the waters, mighty, and immaculate". Like the Indian Sarasvatī, Anāhitā nurtures crops and herds; and she is hailed both as a divinity and as the mythical river which she personifies, "as great in bigness as all these waters which flow forth upon the earth".
Characteristics
Nomenclature
Only Arədvī is specific to the divinity. The words sūra and anāhīta are generic Avestan language adjectives, and respectively mean "mighty" and "pure". Both adjectives also appear as epithets of other divinities or divine concepts such as Haoma and the Fravashis. Both adjectives are also attested in Vedic Sanskrit.As a divinity of the waters, the yazata is of Indo-Iranian origin, according to Lommel related to Sanskrit Sarasvati River| that, like its Proto-Iranian equivalent *Harahwatī, derives from Indo-Iranian *Saraswatī. In its old Iranian form *Harahwatī, "her name was given to the region, rich in rivers, whose modern capital is Kabul." "Like the Devi Saraswati, nurtures crops and herds; and is hailed both as a divinity and the mythical river that she personifies, 'as great in bigness as all these waters which flow forth upon the earth'." Some historians note that despite Anahita's Aryan roots and the way she represented the commonly shared concept of the Heavenly River, which in the Vedas was represented by the goddess Saraswati|, she had no counterpart in the ancient text who bear the same name or one that remotely resembled hers.
In the Persian texts of the Sasanid and later eras, Arədvī Sūra Anāhīta appears as Ardwisur Anāhīd. The evidence suggests a western Iranian origin of Anāhīta..
Conflation with Ishtar
At some point prior to the 4th century BCE, this yazata was conflated with Semitic Ishtar, likewise a divinity of "maiden" fertility and from whom Aredvi Sura Anahita then inherited additional features of a divinity of war and of the planet Venus or "Zohreh" in Arabic. It was moreover the association with the planet Venus, "it seems, which led Herodotus to record that theThe link between Anahita and Ishtar is part of the wider theory that Iranian kingship had Mesopotamian roots and that the Persian gods were natural extensions of the Babylonian deities, where Ahuramazda is considered an aspect of Marduk, Mithra for Shamash, and, finally, Anahita was Ishtar. This is supported by how Ishtar "apparently" gave Aredvi Sura Anahita the epithet Banu, 'the Lady', a typically Mesopotamian construct that is not attested as an epithet for a divinity in Iran before the common era. It is completely unknown in the texts of the Avesta, but evident in Sasanid-era middle Persian inscriptions and in a middle Persian Zend translation of Yasna 68.13. Also in Zoroastrian texts from the post-conquest epoch, the divinity is referred to as 'Anahid the Lady', 'Ardwisur the Lady' and 'Ardwisur the Lady of the waters'.
Because the divinity is unattested in any old Western Iranian language, establishing characteristics prior to the introduction of Zoroastrianism in Western Iran is very much in the realm of speculation. Boyce concludes that "the Achaemenids' devotion to this goddess evidently survived their conversion to Zoroastrianism, and they appear to have used royal influence to have her adopted into the Zoroastrian pantheon." According to an alternate theory, Anahita was perhaps "a daeva of the early and pure Zoroastrian faith, incorporated into the Zoroastrian religion and its revised canon" during the reign of "Artaxerxes I, the Constantine of that faith."
Cosmological entity
The cosmological qualities of the world river are alluded to in Yasht 5, but properly developed only in the Bundahishn, a Zoroastrian account of creation finished in the 11th or 12th century CE. In both texts, Aredvi Sura Anahita is not only a divinity, but also the source of the world river and the world river itself. The cosmological legend runs as follows:All the waters of the world created by Ahura Mazda originate from the source Aredvi Sura Anahita, the life-increasing, herd-increasing, fold-increasing, who makes prosperity for all countries. This source is at the top of the world mountain Hara Berezaiti, "High Hara", around which the sky revolves and that is at the center of Airyanem Vaejah, the first of the lands created by Mazda.
The water, warm and clear, flows through a hundred thousand golden channels towards Mount Hugar, "the Lofty", one of the daughter-peaks of Hara Berezaiti. On the summit of that mountain is Lake Urvis, "the Turmoil", into which the waters flow, becoming quite purified and exiting through another golden channel. Through that channel, which is at the height of a thousand men, one portion of the great spring Aredvi Sura Anahita drizzles in moisture upon the whole earth, where it dispels the dryness of the air and all the creatures of Mazda acquire health from it. Another portion runs down to Vourukasha, the great sea upon which the earth rests, and from which it flows to the seas and oceans of the world and purifies them.
In the Bundahishn, the two halves of the name "Ardwisur Anahid" are occasionally treated independently of one another, that is, with Ardwisur as the representative of waters, and Anahid identified with the planet Venus: The water of the all lakes and seas have their origin with Ardwisur, and in contrast, in a section dealing with the creation of the stars and planets, the Bundahishn speaks of 'Anahid i Abaxtari', that is, the planet Venus. In yet other chapters, the text equates the two, as in "Ardwisur who is Anahid, the father and mother of the Waters".
This legend of the river that descends from Mount Hara appears to have remained a part of living observance for many generations. A Greek inscription from Roman times found in Asia Minor reads "the great goddess Anaïtis of high Hara". On Greek coins of the imperial epoch, she is spoken of as "Anaïtis of the sacred water".
In the Avesta
Aredvi Sura Anahita is principally addressed in Yasht 5, also known as the Aban Yasht, a hymn to the waters in Avestan and one of the longer and better preserved of the devotional hymns. Yasna 65 is the third of the hymns recited at the Ab-Zohr, the "offering to the waters" that accompanies the culminating rites of the Yasna service. Verses from Yasht 5 also form the greater part of the Aban Nyashes, the liturgy to the waters that are a part of the Khordeh Avesta.According to Nyberg and supported by Lommel and Widengren, the older portions of the Aban Yasht were originally composed at a very early date, perhaps not long after the Gathas themselves. Yasna 38, which is dedicated "to the earth and the sacred waters" and is part of seven-chapter Yasna Haptanghāiti, is linguistically as old as the Gathas.
In the Aban Yasht, the river yazata is described as "the great spring Ardvi Sura Anahita is the life-increasing, the herd-increasing, the fold-increasing who makes prosperity for all countries". She is "wide flowing and healing", "efficacious against the daevas", "devoted to Ahura's lore". She is associated with fertility, purifying the seed of men, purifying the wombs of women, encouraging the flow of milk for newborns. As a river divinity, she is responsible for the fertility of the soil and for the growth of crops that nurture both man and beast. She is a beautiful, strong maiden, wearing beaver skins.
The association between water and wisdom that is common to many ancient cultures is also evident in the Aban Yasht, for here Aredvi Sura is the divinity to whom priests and pupils should pray for insight and knowledge. In verse 5.120 she is seen to ride a chariot drawn by four horses named "wind", "rain", "clouds" and "sleet". In newer passages she is described as standing in "statuesque stillness", "ever observed", royally attired with a golden embroidered robe, wearing a golden crown, necklace and earrings, golden breast-ornament, and gold-laced ankle-boots. Aredvi Sura Anahita is bountiful to those who please her, stern to those who do not, and she resides in 'stately places'.
The concept of Aredvi Sura Anahita is to a degree blurred with that of Ashi, the Gathic figure of Good Fortune, and many of the verses of the Aban Yasht also appear in Yasht 17, which is dedicated to Ashi. So also a description of the weapons bestowed upon worshippers, and the superiority in battle. These functions appears out of place in a hymn to the waters, and may have originally been from Yasht 17.
Other verses in Yasht 5 have masculine instead of feminine pronouns, and thus again appear to be verses that were originally dedicated to other divinities. Boyce also suggests that the new compound divinity of waters with martial characteristics gradually usurped the position of Apam Napat, the great warlike water divinity of the Ahuric triad, finally causing the latter's place to be lost and his veneration to become limited to the obligatory verses recited at the Ab-Zohr.
There are also parts in the Yasht that show discrepancies in the description of Anahita. There was the case, for instance, of her beaver coat, which was described to an audience for whom the Yasht was redacted. It was clear that these do not know the animal given the fact that the Eurasian beaver were found in the Caucasus but did not range south of the Caspian Sea nor the rivers and lakes of the Aral-Caspian steppe.