Evidence of The Cult
The earliest evidence of the cult of Zurvan is found in the History of Theology, attributed to Eudemus of Rhodes (c. 370-300 BCE). As cited in Damascius's Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles (6th c. CE), Eudemus describes a sect of the Persians that considered Space/Time to be the primordial "father" of the rivals Oromasdes of Light and Arimanius of Darkness (Dhalla, 1932:331-332).
Most of what is known of Zurvanism during the Sassanid period is from contemporaneous Christian Armenian and Syriac sources. The Kartir inscription at Ka'ba-i Zartosht and the edict of Mihr-Narse are the only contemporaneous native sources that reveal anything about Zurvanism, the latter being the only native evidence from that period that is frankly Zurvanite. The few other Persian language commentaries on the religion of the Sassanid period were all composed after the fall of the empire.
While the Armenian and Syriac sources depict the religion of the Sassanids as having been distinctly Zurvanite, the later native commentaries are primarily Mazdean and with only one exception (10th c. Denkard 9.30) do not mention Zurvan at all. Of the remaining so-called Pahlavi texts only two, the Mēnōg-i Khrad and the "Selections of Zatspram" (both 9th c.) reveal a Zurvanite tendency. The latter is considered to be the latest Zoroastrian text that provides any evidence of the cult of Zurvan. The foreign accounts of the Zurvanite father-of-twins doctrine is substantiated by only a single Persian language source, the Ulema-i Islam ("Doctors of Islam", 13th c.), that, notwithstanding the title, is evidently by a Zoroastrian.
There is no hint of any worship of Zurvan in any of the texts of the Avesta, even though the texts (as they exist today) are the result of a Sassanid era redaction. Zaehner proposes that this is because the individual Sassanid monarchs were not always Zurvanite and that Mazdean Zoroastrianism just happened to have the upper hand during the crucial period that the canon was finally written down (Zaehner, 1955:48; Duchesne-Guillemin, 1956:108). In the texts composed prior to the Sassanid period, Zurvan appears twice, as both an abstract concept and as a minor divinity, but there is no evidence of a cult. In Yasna 72.10 Zurvan is invoked in the company of Space and Air (Vata-Vayu) and in Yasht 13.56, the plants grow in the manner Time has ordained according to the will of Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas. Two other references to Zurvan are also present in the Vendidad, but although these are late additions to the canon, they again do not establish any evidence of a cult. Zurvan does not appear in any listing of the Yazatas (Dhalla, 1932).
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