Mithra, also known as Mehr or Mithras among Romans, is an ancient Iranian deity of covenants, light, oath, justice, the sun, contracts, and friendship. In addition to being a divinity who makes contracts, Mithra is also a judge, an all-seeing guardian of the truth, and a defender of the waterways, the harvest, and the livestock. The Mithraic enigmas were explained by the Romans using the Zoroastrian Persian texts. Both the Gathas, the oldest literature of Zoroastrianism and traditionally attributed to Zoroaster himself, and the Yasna Haptanghaiti, a seven-verse portion of the Yasna ritual, do not however specifically mention Mithra. In the Iranian Ahuric Triad, which also includes Ahura Mazda and Ahura Berezaiti or Apam Napat, Mithra is a respected figure. In his role as the Divinity of Contract, Mithra is unshakeable, without flaw, alert at all times, and never at rest. Furthermore, Mithra is the protector of livestock, and his company name is Wide Pastures. He ensures that the pastures receive enough water in his capacity as the guardian of water. Several royal Achaemenid inscriptions mention the god, despite the absence of Mithraic imagery at this time. In the Zoroastrian calendar, Mithra protects and honors both the sixteenth day of the month and the seventh month of the year. Since the Iranian civil calendar adopted the Zoroastrian month names in 1925, the seventh month of the year has also been referred to as Mihr. The first day of the second half of the month and the first month of the second half of the year are, respectively, the sixteenth day and the seventh month, reflecting the place of the Mithra in the hierarchy of the Divinities. In Zoroastrian literature, Mithra is distinguished from the divinity of the Sun, whose name is Hvare-khshaeta, which means Radiant Sun and in Middle Persian is the source of the word Khorshed for the Sun. Nevertheless, in Zoroastrian mythology, Mithra developed from an all-seeing figure, and therefore loosely related with the Sun, into a divinity co-identified with the Sun itself, thereby effectively replacing Hvare-khshaeta. It is unclear how, when, or why this happened, although it is frequently attributed to confusion with the Greek deity Apollo and/or the Babylonian solar god Mithra, with whom Mithra shares a number of traits, including a judicial role and a connection to the solar. Because Mithra/Mitra is related with sunrise in the Atharvaveda and the Indic Rigveda has solar deities that are similar to them, this trait is a part of Indian heritage of Mithra. Even in modern times, sun salutations are performed daily around the world in Yogic activity and are preceded by the chanting of OM Mitraya Namaha, where Mitraya is one of the 108 names for Lord Surya/Sun God. Mithra-related royal names can be found in the dynasties of Parthia, Armenia, Anatolia, Pontus, and Cappadocia. Images from other Iranian cultures during the Parthian period, such as Commagene on the boundary between Roman and Parthian civilization and the Kushan Empire on the Indo-Iranian border, feature a young Mithra in the style of Apollo [Information Credit : Mithra, Wikipedia] [Wikipedia-Link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithra ] [Image Credit : Mithraism, Wikipedia] [Image : A Roman tauroctony relief from Aquileia (c. 175 CE; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)] [Image Availed Under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported ; Wikipedia-Image-Author : CristianChirita; (Please Relate to Source-Image URL for more Usage Property)] [License-Link : https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en ] [Wikipedia-Source-Image-URL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KunsthistorischesMuseumMithrabulSacrifice.jpg ] #History
Old World
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