(West Asian mythology)
In Persian mythology Yima is schizoid. Like the Hindu Yama, he was regarded as the first man and progenitor of the human race. For Zoroaster, however, he was a sinner, ‘who, to please his people, gave them the flesh of the ox to eat’. The price of this transgression was his own immortality and with it the immortality of his descendants. Yima's crime may have been not so much the toleration of meat-eating in his kingdom as that he had slaughtered cattle in sacrifices to gods other than Ahura Mazdah, ‘the wise lord’.
Despite the attack of Zoroaster the myth of ‘royal’ Yima's golden age persisted till the Arab conquest of 652. During his 700-year reign Yima was credited with the subjugation of the demons, taking away their lands and riches, and on three occasions he extended his borders to make room for all the ‘cattle, great and small, men and dogs, birds, and red, burning fires’ that the conditions of peace and plenty had done so much to multiply. But the golden age could not last forever, and so Ahura Mazdah warned that in the future ‘wicked’ men on earth would suffer ‘destructive winters’–lashing hail, deluging rain, and heavy snow. To escape this calamity Yima was told he must hollow out for his choicest possessions a vara, or subterranean sanctuary. ‘Gather together’, said Ahura Mazdah, ‘the seed of all men and women that are the tallest, best, and most beautiful; gather together the seed of all kinds of animals that are the finest on this earth; gather together the seed of all plants and fruits that are the tallest and sweetest. In pairs bring them to your retreat. But take with you nothing misshapen or diseased, nor any of the other afflictions laid upon the world by Ahriman.’ At the end of time it was anticipated that Yima would return and refurbish the surface of the earth.
