The Millennium of Yima

According to the Avesta Drvāspā Yašt, Yima reigned « for a thousand years ». The Four periods of the millennium of Yima are:

First period: 1-300

These three hundred years passed under the royal command of Yima. In this period, Yima was grosso modo a fifteen-year-old man. “This is the age in which for the first time man has the right to gird the belt.” It was Yima who is said to have introduced the wearing of the (sacred) belt on the waist. Ahura Mazdā asked him to be the reciter and messenger of the Daēnā, which Yima refused. But he accepted to be the protector, guardian, and supervisor of (the promotion of) the world. Then Ahura Mazdā offered him two implements: a suβrā, and an aštrā adorned with gold. Av. aštrā is cognate with Skt. áṣṭrā ‘a prick or goad for driving cattle’, and Pers. aštar ‘whip; a term used as a symbol of penance’. Av. suβrā was translated by Pers. sūrāgumand lit. ‘having holes’, and was interpreted as a gāvdumab ‘horn, trumpet’. Aži Dahāka also possessed a golden suβrā by which he could attract women or property. In a parable about the marvellous effects produced by the application of the bull’s urine, Yima, following Sraoša’s advice, called Aŋra Mainyu to his presence by singing (srōd) –in the original story, he would had played on the wind instrument.

Second period: 301-600

At the beginning of this period, Yima, by suβrā and aštrā, made the earth expand by one-third in size from what it was before.

Third period: 601-900

At the beginning of this period, Yima made again the earth expand by two-thirds in size from what it was before. The tradition holds this: In these two periods, Yima withheld from the world cold and heat, hunger and thirst, old age and destruction.

Fourth: 901-1000

For the third time, Yima made the earth expand by three-thirds in size.

Bad winters threatened the corporeal existence. They announced one harsh and horrible winter. Yima decided to build a vara. According to an Avesta fragment, he made this vara at the end of the first millennium.

These bad winters came over the corporeal world of life, on account of a particular sin committed by Yima. A Gāθic statement has inspired the later tradition to condemn Yima for having introduced the practice of eating the meat of the sacrificial animal. According to the Zamyād Yašt, when Yima lied, the Fortune (xvarǝnah-) went away from him in the form of a bird of prey. After that he fled, in company of his sister Yimī, from the assembly of Dahāka to a secret place in a lake. Dahāka found their hideout. Yima was in flight for a hundred years. At the end of this period, Yima hid himself in the trunk of a tree. Dahāka ordered to saw the tree and set fire to it. Yima died.

According to a different tradition preserved in the Zand, at the beginning of the fourth millennium (i.e., the first millennium in the Mixture), when Aŋra Mańyu rushed, existed Gaya Marətān and Gao (Primal Man and Primal Cow), and this millennium stretched to the end of the reign of Yima: