Yima

Yima West Asia
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...

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