Ahuna Vairya - As An Invocation

As An Invocation

According to the Hom Yasht, Zoroaster himself was the first mortal to recite the prayer (Yasna 9.14). Zend commentary Yasna 19.13 notes that the invocation's efficacy derives from its primordial nature, as Ahura Mazda articulated the prayer immediately before creating the material universe.

Yasna 19.10 notes that "this utterance is a thing of such a nature, that if all the corporeal and living world should learn it, and learning hold fast by it, they would be redeemed from their mortality."

As a primordial utterance, the hymn is believed to have talismanic virtues: the power to aid mortals in distress, and inversely as a potent weapon against the daevas (modern Persian: divs, demons). In the earlier texts of the Avesta, the Ahuna Vairya is the "most victorious" (Yasht 11.13), the "veracious word" (Yasna 8.1), the "sacred gift" (Yasna 27.7). In Vendidad 11.3, in addition to being "most healing", frequent recitation is said to be the means to "protect the body".

The hymn's supremacy among sacred Zoroastrian formulae is even more evident in later literature.
In the Denkard ('Acts of Religion', 9th century),

• four of the twenty-one nasks composed during the Sassanid era are noted to have expounded on the efficacy of the hymn (8.44.1).
• the prayer's potency to smite demons and protect life and property are described at length. (4.38-45, 8.43.81, 9.1.4)
• the hymn's primordial nature is seen as the root and summation of the belief in Ahura Mazda, "the seed of seeds of the reckoning of the religion." (8.45.1)

According to the Bundahishn ('Original Creation', finished in the 11th or 12th century),

• the spirit of the yatha ahu vairyo is the first manifestation of the luminaries that Ahura Mazda created. (12.13-14)
• in articulating the formula, Ahura Mazda made his ultimate triumph evident to "the evil spirit" (Angra Mainyu), who then fell back "confounded and impotent as to the harm he caused the creatures of Ahuramazd" (1.29-30).