Hvare-khshaeta is the shining Sun invoked in the Avesta. The short Sun Yasht and the longer Khwarshed Niyayesh connect its rising with the flourishing of creation, religious purification and resistance to destructive powers. Their wording also helps explain the close relationship between the Sun and Mithra without treating every period of Iranian religion as identical.

False-colour full disc of the Sun with bright active regions and a large looping eruption on the left
The Sun observed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on 30 March 2010. This modern extreme-ultraviolet composite uses false colours; it illustrates the celestial body, rather than an ancient religious image. NASA/SDO, public domain. NASA/SDO · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.

The name and the texts

Hvare-khshaeta is commonly rendered as the shining or radiant Sun. In the Sun Yasht, the recurring invocation adds immortality and the epithet of swift horses. These words give the Sun a place among the powers honoured in Zoroastrian worship. [1] Khwarshed is the form used in the title of the later prayer as presented in the Khorda Avesta. Readers encounter different spellings across transliterations and translations; the text and passage number are therefore useful when comparing an account with its evidence.

What the Sun Yasht says

Yasht 6 is a compact hymn whose numbered passages develop several themes. Section 1 describes heavenly yazatas gathering glory from the Sun’s warmth and distributing it over the earth for the increase of good creation. Section 2 connects sunrise with the cleansing of earth and waters, listing running water, wells, seas and standing water. Section 3 imagines the destructive daevas overwhelming the seven regions if the Sun did not rise. [1] Purification here belongs to the hymn’s religious account of the world; the passage does not provide a practical method for making water safe to drink.

Protection, speech and offering

Section 4 associates worship of the Sun with opposition to darkness, destructive beings, robbers, sorcery and hidden death. It also links that worship to Ahura Mazda, the Amesha Spentas and the worshipper’s own soul. Sections 5–6 move to Mithra, the relationship between Moon and Sun, and the acts that accompany worship. Darmesteter’s translation lists libations, haoma, baresma, sacred utterance, speech and deeds. [1] The hymn thus combines cosmic order with a vocabulary of ritual action and ethical responsibility, rather than describing sunlight only as a beautiful natural spectacle.

The longer Sun litany

The Khwarshed Niyayesh places solar praise inside a wider prayer. Its opening invokes Ormazd and repentance; section 3 affirms good thoughts, words and deeds. Section 5 separately honours Ahura Mazda, the Amesha Spentas, Mithra and the Sun. Instructions following it supply different recitations for the Hawan, Rapithwin and Uzerin prayer periods. Sections 11–16 repeat the main sequence found in Yasht 6. [2] This structure shows how a short hymn could be incorporated into a longer devotional practice with introductory commitments and directions for recitation.

Mithra and the Sun

Hanns-Peter Schmidt explains that Avestan Mithra is closely associated with the Sun while remaining a distinct figure: Yasht 10.13 has Mithra rise over the mountains before sunrise. He also notes the later association of the name Mihr with the Sun in Pahlavi material. [3] The Sun litany itself preserves the distinction through separate invocations. [2] Historical interpretation needs to follow these textual and chronological differences; evidence of a later identification should be located in its own setting.

Calendar and regional context

The Siroza’s second series includes a dedication to Khwarshed at section 11, again invoking the immortal, shining, swift-horsed Sun. [4] Alongside the Yasht and Niyayesh, this gives readers three concrete places to examine solar devotion. These sources belong to the wider Iranian religious heritage relevant to studying the region’s history. Connections with particular Kurdish or Yazidi practices require evidence about those communities’ own texts, rituals and transmission; a shared interest in the Sun alone cannot establish an uninterrupted line of inheritance.

Sources and further reading

  1. Sun Yasht, Yasht 6, sections 0–7, translated by James Darmesteter, Sacred Books of the East, American edition (1898); Avesta.org.
  2. Khwarshed Niyayesh, sections 0–19, translated by M. N. Dhalla (1908), Avestan text based on Geldner (1896), digital edition Joseph H. Peterson (2002); Avesta.org.
  3. Hanns-Peter Schmidt, Mithra i. Mitra in Old Indian and Mithra in Old Iranian, Encyclopaedia Iranica (2006; updated 2018); Avestan distinction and later solar association.
  4. Siroza 2, section 11, Khwarshed, translated by James Darmesteter, Sacred Books of the East, American edition (1898); Avesta.org.
  5. NASA/SDO, multiwavelength extreme-ultraviolet full-disc solar image, 30 March 2010; public domain, Wikimedia Commons.