Yima

The good shepherd

In the Vendidad (Fargard 2), Ahura Mazda first asks Yima, son of Vivanghat, to be the bearer of his religion; Yima declines but agrees to rule and protect the world, promising that under him there will be neither cold wind nor hot wind, disease nor death. Given a golden seal and a gold-inlaid dagger, he enlarges the earth three times as it fills with people and animals, calling on Spenta Armaiti to stretch wider. Warned of terrible winters to come, he builds the Var, an enclosure in which the best of every kind of person, animal, plant, and fire is preserved.

The lost Glory

The Zamyad Yasht (Yasht 19) says that when Yima began to delight in words of falsehood, the royal Glory fled from him in the shape of a bird, three times; Mithra, Thraetaona, and Keresaspa seized it in turn. The same hymn names Spityura as the one 'who sawed Yima in twain'.

Jamshid in the Shahnameh

Ferdowsi's Jamshid is a great civilizing king who teaches crafts, divides society into classes, and has the demons raise his jeweled throne into the sky, a day remembered as Nowruz. Growing proud, he claims to be the world's creator; the divine glory (farr) leaves him, and the usurper Zahhak takes his throne and later has him sawn in two. The ruins of Persepolis came to be called Takht-e Jamshid, 'Jamshid's Throne'.

The Indian twin

Yima is the Iranian counterpart of the Vedic Yama: both are sons of the sun-related Vivahvant or Vivasvant, and both names mean 'twin'. In India Yama became king of the dead; in Iran Yima remained the king of a lost golden age.