Aži Dahāka

Quick facts

What the source says

In Bawri, Aži Dahāka offers Ardvi Sura Anahita a hundred male horses, a thousand oxen and ten thousand lambs. His requested reward is that the earth’s seven Karshvares should be left without people. The deity refuses, despite his offerings and entreaties.^{[1: 5.29–31]}

The following section places Thraetaona’s sacrifice in four-cornered Varena. He offers the same numbers of animals. He asks to overcome Aži Dahāka and deliver Savanghavach and Erenavach, whom Darmesteter’s text calls Dahāka’s wives. Ardvi Sura Anahita grants his request.^{[1: 5.33–35]}

Description and limits

Verse 34 gives three mouths, three heads and six eyes, together with the phrase “a thousand senses.” It calls Aži Dahāka a powerful Druj and a demon created by Angra Mainyu to attack the good creation. The passage does not describe his colour, size, wings, legs, fire-breathing or venom.^{[1: 5.34]}

The sensory phrase is a translation choice, not a list of a thousand separate abilities. Skjærvø’s scholarly discussion renders the corresponding epithet as “a thousand viles.” Neither wording warrants omniscience. His discussion also notes uncertainty over a human or dragon-shaped conception of the figure; this profile does not resolve that uncertainty by inventing a transformation.^{[2: “Aži Dahāka”]}

Source realm: the Zoroastrian cosmos

Mythic cosmos is the archive’s setting category for this sacred account of the created world and its adversary. Bawri names the place of Dahāka’s offering; Varena names Thraetaona’s. The verses do not establish either as Dahāka’s permanent dwelling, nor identify a battlefield. No modern coordinates are assigned here.^{[1: 5.29–35]}

This classification identifies the text’s religious cosmology. It does not classify Zoroastrian belief as a modern fictional setting.

Names and version boundaries

The heading preserves Aži Dahāka with diacritics; the linked translation prints Azi Dahaka. Skjærvø explains that Avestan aži has both snake and dragon senses. The site’s comparative dragon label preserves that linguistic range.^{[2: opening discussion]}

This record follows the Ābān Yasht alone for its account. Other Avestan passages, Pahlavi narratives and Persian literary retellings require their own source markers; they are not additional episodes silently attached to verses 29–35. The women’s parentage and the circumstances in which they became Dahāka’s wives are not supplied in this passage.^{[1: 5.29–35]}

Offerings and their purpose

The juxtaposition gives equal sacrificial quantities different answers: Dahāka’s destructive wish is refused, while Thraetaona’s request succeeds. Read within these verses, the contrast makes the purpose of the prayer matter alongside the offering. This is an editorial reading of the hymn’s sequence, not a universal claim about dragon symbolism.^{[1: 5.29–35]}