Verethragna (Bahram): The Yazata of Victory
- Dala Sarkis
- 9 hours ago
- 10 min read
Introduction
Verethragna, known in later ages as Bahram, is the Zoroastrian divinity of victory: the smasher of every obstacle, the giver of triumph, and one of the most beloved of the lesser holy beings, the yazatas, who serve Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord. He is the personified power of victory itself, and of old, when armies marched and heroes fought, no divinity was invoked more eagerly for aid.
He is also one of the most vivid figures in all the Iranic imagination, for he appears not in one shape but in ten: a rushing wind, a golden-horned bull, a white horse, a wild boar, a beautiful youth, a bird of prey, and more, before coming at last as an armed warrior with a sword of gold. In his own great hymn, the Bahram Yasht, these ten dazzling incarnations are described one by one as the forms in which he came to the prophet Zoroaster.
Verethragna's name has outlived empires. As Bahram, it became the name of Sasanian emperors and of the planet Mars, of a whole grade of sacred fire, and of countless men across the Iranic world to this day, the Kurds among them. To follow his story is to trace the idea of victory, martial, spiritual and moral, through thousands of years of Iranic faith.
Contents
Who Is Verethragna?
Verethragna (later called Bahram) is the yazata, or divinity, of victory in Zoroastrianism, an emanation of Ahura Mazda who personifies the smashing of all resistance and the granting of triumph. Celebrated in his own Avestan hymn, the Bahram Yasht, he is famous for appearing in ten different forms, animal, human and elemental, and for his role as the giver of victory in war, the remover of obstacles, and even a healer. His name lives on as Bahram, borne by kings, by the planet Mars, and by the highest grade of Zoroastrian sacred fire.
Key Takeaways
Verethragna, later Bahram, is the Zoroastrian yazata of victory.
His name means the smashing or smiting of resistance.
He appears in ten incarnations, from a wind and a bull to an armed warrior.
He is an ancient Indo-Iranian war-god, cognate with the Vedic Vrtrahan.
The Atash Bahram, the highest grade of sacred fire, is named after him.
As Bahram, his name still lives across the Iranic world, including among Kurds.
Quick Facts
Name: Verethragna (Avestan, 'smasher of resistance'); later Warahran, Bahram, Behram
Type: Yazata (divinity) of victory in Zoroastrianism
Avestan hymn: The Bahram Yasht (Yasht 14), one of the oldest of the hymns
Forms: Ten incarnations, from a wind and a bull to a golden-sworded warrior
Roots: An ancient Indo-Iranian war-god; cognate with the Vedic Vrtrahan
Companion of: Mithra, the lord of the covenant
Sacred fire: The Atash Bahram, the highest grade of Zoroastrian fire
Also: A healer, a remover of obstacles, and the name of the planet Mars
Legacy: Bahram, a name borne by Sasanian emperors and still used today
Attestation: The Avesta, above all the Bahram Yasht; later Pahlavi texts
The Smasher of Resistance
The name says everything. Verethragna is built from old Iranian words meaning obstacle and smiting, so that the divinity is, quite literally, the smashing of all resistance, the personified power that breaks through every barrier to triumph. He is victory itself made into a being, and the scholar Mary Boyce observed that as a giver of victory he plainly enjoyed the greatest popularity of all in ancient times.
His glory is sung in the Bahram Yasht, one of the oldest and most vivid of the Avestan hymns, in which he comes to the prophet Zoroaster in form after form to display his power. Yet Verethragna is more than a war-god: he is invoked also as a healer, a giver of strength and virility, and a punisher of the evil done by men and demons alike. He is the force that overcomes whatever stands in the way of the good, on the battlefield and beyond it.
The Ten Incarnations
The most famous feature of Verethragna is his shapeshifting. The Bahram Yasht describes ten forms in which he appeared, each a different image of power: first an impetuous, rushing wind; then a bull with horns of gold; a white horse with ears and muzzle of gold; a strong burden-camel; a sharp-tusked boar; a beautiful youth of fifteen, in the prime of vigour; a swift bird of prey; a ram; a wild fighting goat; and finally a warrior, bright and beautiful, bearing a golden sword.
Each form captures an aspect of victory: the cleansing speed of the wind, the brute strength of the bull and boar, the energy of youth, the keen swiftness of the bird, the unstoppable charge of the ram and goat, and at the last the disciplined might of the armed man. Scholars have long noted that this parade of incarnations recalls, though without exact correspondence, the avatars of Vishnu and the forms of Indra in the related religious world of ancient India, a sign of how deep and how shared these images run.
An Ancient Indo-Iranian War-God
Verethragna is far older than Zoroastrianism itself. His name descends from an ancient Indo-Iranian and ultimately Proto-Indo-European root meaning the slayer of the blocker, the one who breaks the obstacle, and he has a direct cognate in the Vedic tradition of India: Vrtrahan, the slayer of the demon Vrtra, an epithet above all of the warrior-god Indra. The two divinities are branches of one ancient root, a victory-god worshipped before the Iranian and Indian peoples ever parted.
His traces are scattered across the ancient world. The name appears among the Armenians as Vahagn, among the Kushans as Orlagno, and among the Parthians and Sogdians in their own forms. Where cultures met, he was identified with their own gods of strength and triumph: a bronze statue from Mesopotamia, two thousand years old, bears inscriptions naming its figure as both the Greek Heracles and Verethragna. Parallels have been drawn, too, with Ares, with the Babylonian Nergal, and with the Egyptian Horus, the universal hero-god of victory wearing many names.
Companion of Mithra
Within the Zoroastrian world, Verethragna is closely bound to Mithra, the great lord of the covenant and the light. In the hymn to Mithra, Verethragna is named as his principal companion, the mighty power that goes before him and clears his path, smiting the liars and oath-breakers whom Mithra judges. Where Mithra is the guardian of the sworn word, Verethragna is the force that makes his justice prevail.
He keeps company, too, with the wider host of yazatas, the holy beings who serve Ahura Mazda and govern the world. Some of his ten incarnations, the youth, the bull, the horse, the bird and the wind, are shared with other divinities such as the star Tishtrya and the wind-god Vayu, a reminder that in the Zoroastrian vision these powers form a single, interwoven company of the divine, each lending strength to the others in the great work of upholding the good.
Bahram: The Name Through the Ages
Over the centuries the Avestan Verethragna became, in Middle Persian, Warahran, and from there the familiar Bahram, Behram and Vahram of later ages. So beloved was the victory-divinity that his name spread far beyond the temple. No fewer than five emperors of the Sasanian dynasty bore the name Bahram, hoping to rule under the sign of victory, and the planet we call Mars, the red star of war, is in the Persian sky called Bahram to this day.
In the Zoroastrian calendar the twentieth day of every month is Roj Bahram, the day of Verethragna, on which the faithful recite his hymn and call upon him for victory over their troubles. And the name itself never died: Bahram and its forms remain common given names across the whole Iranic world, the Kurds among them, so that an ancient god of victory lives on quietly in the names of ordinary people.
The Fire of Victory: Atash Bahram
Verethragna's greatest legacy may be in fire. The highest and most sacred grade of Zoroastrian temple fire is the Atash Bahram, the Fire of Victory, named in his honour. Its establishment is the most elaborate of all religious undertakings, requiring sixteen different fires, gathered from sources as varied as a bolt of lightning and the hearth of a metalworker, to be brought together and purified over many months. Once consecrated, such a fire is tended unceasingly and may burn for more than a thousand years. In the legends, it was the just king Kay Khosrow who founded one of the first great Bahram fires.
Under the Sasanian emperors, victory fires of this kind were founded across the land, often to commemorate a triumph or to honour a king. After the coming of Islam most were extinguished, but a few survive: the great fire at Yazd in Iran has reportedly burned for some fifteen centuries, and others were carried by refugees to India, where they still blaze in the temples of the Parsi community. In these undying flames, the ancient divinity of victory lives on as light.
Symbolism
Verethragna embodies a profound idea: that victory is sacred, and that the breaking of obstacles is a holy act. His victory is not only the triumph of armies but the triumph of good over evil, of health over sickness, of strength over weakness, of order over the forces that would block and bind. The Parsi tradition has compared him to the beloved Hindu god Ganesha, for like him Verethragna is, above all, the remover of obstacles, the power one calls upon when the way ahead is barred.
His ten forms give that idea its richness. Victory, the hymn seems to say, has many faces: it can be swift and cleansing as the wind, immovably strong as the bull, keenly fast as the hawk, fearless as the boar, or disciplined as the armed warrior. To invoke Verethragna is to call on whichever face of strength a moment requires, and to trust that no obstacle, outward or inward, is beyond breaking.
Verethragna and the Kurds
As one of the great divinities of the ancient Iranic world, Verethragna belongs to the shared heritage of all the Iranic peoples, the Kurds among them. His name, in the form Bahram or Behram, is still given to Kurdish and other Iranic children, a living thread reaching back to the old victory-god. And his great theme, the triumph of good over the forces that oppress it, is the very theme the Kurds celebrate each spring at Newroz, when the smith Kawa and the just king Faridun broke the tyranny of Zahhak.
As always with this shared inheritance, it would be wrong to claim Verethragna as uniquely Kurdish. He is the common treasure of a whole family of Iranic nations, Persians, Kurds and others alike, and of the Zoroastrian faith that gave him his fullest form. The Kurds may rightly count this radiant divinity of victory among the legends of their wider world, a sign of the deep Iranic roots from which their own traditions of triumph and renewal spring.
Debates and Misconceptions
Is Verethragna a god? In the strict sense of Zoroastrian belief, no, or not an independent one. He is a yazata, one of the holy beings who serve the one supreme God, Ahura Mazda, an aspect and instrument of the divine rather than a rival deity. Zoroastrianism is monotheistic, and Verethragna's victory is always understood as the victory of the Wise Lord's good order, won through his servant.
Is he the same as Indra or Heracles? Not the same, but related. Verethragna and the Vedic Vrtrahan share a single ancient Indo-Iranian root, and in later ages he was identified with Heracles and other hero-gods where cultures met. These are genuine kinships and parallels, evidence of a shared and very old inheritance, but they are not identities; Verethragna is his own figure, shaped by the Iranic and Zoroastrian world.
Is he Persian or Kurdish? Like the rest of this heritage, Verethragna belongs to all the Iranic peoples in common. He flourished in the Zoroastrian faith of the Persian empires, yet he is the shared inheritance of Persians, Kurds and their neighbours alike. He is best understood not as the property of one nation but as part of a treasure held by a whole family of peoples.
Related Topics
Mithra: the lord of the covenant, whose principal companion Verethragna is
Anahita: the lady of the waters, another of the great yazatas
Ahura Mazda: the Wise Lord, whom Verethragna serves
Kay Khosrow: the just king who founded a great Bahram fire of victory
The Faravahar: the winged emblem of the Zoroastrian faith
The Amesha Spentas: the seven Bounteous Immortals of Ahura Mazda
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Verethragna?
Verethragna, later called Bahram, is the Zoroastrian yazata of victory, an emanation of Ahura Mazda. His name means the smashing of resistance, and he is famous for appearing in ten different forms and for giving victory in war and over every obstacle.
What are the ten incarnations of Verethragna?
In the Bahram Yasht he appears as a wind, a golden-horned bull, a white horse, a camel, a boar, a youth of fifteen, a bird of prey, a ram, a wild goat, and finally an armed warrior with a golden sword, each a different image of victorious power.
What does the name Bahram mean?
Bahram is the later form of Verethragna, meaning victory or the smiting of resistance. It became the name of Sasanian emperors, the Persian name of the planet Mars, and a common given name still used across the Iranic world.
What is the Atash Bahram?
The Atash Bahram, or Fire of Victory, is the highest grade of Zoroastrian sacred fire, named after Verethragna. Its consecration is the most elaborate of all, gathering and purifying sixteen different fires, and once lit it may burn for centuries.
Is Verethragna related to the Vedic Indra?
Yes, by ancient kinship. Verethragna and the Vedic Vrtrahan, an epithet of Indra, descend from one Indo-Iranian victory-god. They are related branches of a shared root rather than the same figure.
Is Verethragna a Kurdish god?
He belongs to the shared Iranic heritage of which the Kurds are part, not to any single nation. His name, as Bahram or Behram, is still used among Kurds and other Iranic peoples, a living link to the ancient divinity of victory.
References and Further Reading
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