Anahita

Anahita is one of the most popular yazatas (beings worthy of worship) in the Zoroastrian religion. A Zoroastrian hymn highlights her function as intimately concerned with the wellbeing of the community, women in particular. In this hymn, Anahita is referred to as Aredvi Sura Anahita, meaning "moist, strong, undefiled." These three attributes assert her identity as a powerful, but chaste, water divinity.

The Zoroastrian hymn in honor of Anahita is usually called the Aban Yasht (Hymn to the waters). It describes the yazata as increasing water-channels, herds, fields, possessions, and land. Anahita is identified as a mythical world river, which flows from Mt. Hukairya into the Vourukasha Sea, and is the source of all the waters. In this role, she has been compared with the Vedic Sarasvati.

The Yasht praises Anahita as bestowing fertility: She "purifies the seed of all males, and purifies the womb of all females for giving birth," and "makes childbirth easy for all females and makes [their] milk flow at the proper time" (Yasht 5.2). Even in the twenty-first century, girls hoping to marry and pregnant women invoke Anahita's beneficent action. Women in the Parsi (Indian Zoroastrian) community recite certain verses of the hymn, which form the prayer known as the Aban Niyayesh, to ensure a smooth delivery and the birth of a healthy child.

Anahita is also referred to in the hymn as a warrior for justice, who steers a chariot pulled by four horses, protecting Iran and vanquishing its foes. She bestows chariots and arms, as well as household goods, to worshippers; brings victory to warriors in battle; and the destruction of all enemies, both mortal and demonic. Artaxerxes II (r. 404–358 bce) was the first Achaemenid monarch to invoke Anahita, in his royal inscriptions at Susa. The hymn describes Aredvi Sura Anahita "in the form of a beautiful maiden, very strong, fair of form, high-bodiced, erect, of noble birth" (Yt. 5.64). In keeping with her association with water, she wears beaver skins (Yt. 5.129). As a celestial being, she also has a golden mantle, and jewelry consisting of golden earrings, necklace, and an eight-sided crown with a hundred stars, adorned with ribbons (Yt. 5.127f).

Such physical descriptions, alongside the reports of Greek historians, suggest that from early times statues were used in her worship, although to date none have been found. From the Achaemenid period onward, devotion to Anahita seems to have involved an element of syncretism. The Babylonian priest scribe Berossus records that Artaxerxes II was the first Persian king to erect statues of Aphrodite Anaitis. Anaitis is the Greek rendition of Anahita, and seems to derive from a western Iranian name for the goddess of the planet Venus (Anahiti, the Pure One). The Persian word for Venus—Nahid—echoes this connection, and remains a popular Iranian girl's name. The Greeks identified Anahita with several goddesses from their own pantheon—sometimes Aphrodite or Athena, but most frequently Artemis, due to her association with purity. According to Plutarch, the "Persian Diana" was chief of all the gods adored by the "barbarians beyond the Euphrates" (Lucullus, 24).

Anahita is also identified with other goddesses of western Asia, such as Ishtar, Inanna, and Nana. Both Nana and Anahita were widely worshipped in Iran and Armenia, and both goddesses have characteristics that may derive from the Magna Mater cult of the region, particularly that relating to Phrygian goddess Cybele. Classical sources refer to several temples dedicated to Anahita, under a Persian priesthood, both in Persia proper and elsewhere in western Asia. The Greek historian Strabo claims that Anahita was the most popular of the Persian divinities worshipped by the Armenians, and numerous shrines to Anahit are attested there.

Anahita was revered as the protective yazata of the Sasanian dynasty (224–651 ce), the last Persian Zoroastrian monarchy. Coins from the reign of Bahram II (r. 276–293 ce) apparently depict Anahita handing the regnal diadem to the king. Although the Sasanian capital was at Ctesiphon, the dynastic temple, dedicated to Anahita, was at Estakhr in Pars. There the Sasanian monarchs were crowned. External texts describe how the Sasanians hung the heads of their enemies against the temple walls, thus acknowledging Anahita's guardianship.

The title of "Lady" bestowed upon Anahita in Middle Persian inscriptions and Armenian texts probably derives from Sumerian Inanna, meaning "Lady of Heaven." Sogdian texts from Panjikent also refer to "Nana the Lady." The modern Persian banu (the Lady) is used of Anahita in later Zoroastrian texts, and also in the name of a shrine in Iran, where Anahita was apparently worshipped. Banu-Pars (Lady of Pars) shrine in Yazd is set above a river, below a spring of water, and remains a holy place for Iranian Zoroastrians. Other shrines continue this tradition of venerating Anahita in the form of her natural icon, water, including a "spring of Anahit" on the slopes of Mt. Ararat, where the water is believed to cure barrenness and to protect crops from locusts.

Most contemporary Zoroastrians are familiar with the offering made on the day dedicated to the waters, the eighth day of the tenth month. In India on this day, Parsis offer flowers and dar-ni-pori (a sweetened lentil mixture in pastry) to the waters, after reciting a prayer by the sea or a river. Although men also observe the festival, the ritual is particularly associated with women, perhaps because of the belief that the source and sustenance of all the waters is the yazata Aredvi Sura Anahita.

see also Aphrodite; Venus; Zoroastrianism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boyce, Mary. 1967. "Bibi Shahrbanu and the Lady of Pars." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 30: 30-44.

Choksy, Jamsheed K. 2002. Evil, Good, and Gender: Facets of the Feminine in Zorastrian Religious History. New York: Peter Lang.

Choksy, Jamsheed K., and Firoze M. Kotwal. 2005. "Praise and Piety: Niyāyišns and Yašts in the History of Zorastrian Praxis." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 68: 215-252.

Russell, James R. 1987. Zoroastrianism in Armenia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University and National Association for Armenian Studies and Research.

                                                     Jenny Rose