In Tradition
According to Denkard 3.157, it is due "to the superior assistance and friendship" of Airyaman (→ MP Erman) that a physician can heal through medicinal herbs. The physician's medical skills depend on the quality of his relationship with Airyaman. In the same section, Airyaman's healing powers are said to be "hidden" or have "occult efficacy." He has the God-commanded power to cure 4,333 kinds of diseases.
The Avesta's identification of Airyaman with Asha Vahishta (→ MP Ardavahisht) is carried forward into Zoroastrian trandition. In Denkard 8.37.13, Airyaman's role as healer is even shared with Asha Vahishta: While Airyaman is responsible for corporeal health, Asha Vahishta is responsible for spiritual health.
In the eschatology of Zoroastrian tradition, "Fire and Airyaman will melt the metals that are in the mountains and hills, and they will flow over the earth like rivers. And they will make all men to pass through that molten metal and thereby make them clean." Similarly, in the Bundahishn (completed 12th century), the proper noun airyaman is an epithet of the saoshyant, an eschatological figure who brings about the final renovation of the world. Like the divinity Airyaman, the saoshyant is closely connected to Asha Vahishta.
In a Pazend nuptial hymn that continues to recited as Zoroastrian weddings, the divinity of health is invoked as the guardian of matrimony. The doctrinal foundation of this identification is Yasna 54.1 (reiterated in the hymn), which invokes Airyaman "for the joy of the marrying couple."
In present-day Zoroastrianism, the Gathic airyaman ishyo prayer is considered to be an invocation of the divinity Airyaman.
Read more about this topic: Airyaman
Famous quotes containing the word tradition:
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“The tradition I cherish is the ideal this country was built upon, the concept of religious pluralism, of a plethora of opinions, of tolerance and not the jihad. Religious war, pooh. The war is between those who trust us to think and those who believe we must merely be led.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)