Aka Manah

In the Gathas, the oldest hymns and the only ones ascribed to Zarathustra himself, aka manah is not yet anybody: it is «evil mind», a disposition of the soul. The prophet says that the deceitful man lives by deeds «stemming from evil mind», and asks to turn away from Ahura Mazda «disobedience and evil mind», putting it on a level with a vice rather than with a being. Only in two further passages does it begin to harden: the daevas «chose the worst mind» and, above all, «ye gods, all of you are the offspring stemming from evil mind». That last verse inverts the genealogy usually told. Aka Manah is not born of Angra Mainyu as one son among others: it is the daevas who come out of him. The personification is complete in the Younger Avesta, where he already fights as a person, and in the Pahlavi books Akoman has a biography, an office and companions. A thousand years separate the idea from the character, and that distance is the most interesting thing about him.

The scene that best defines him is not a battle. In the Vendidad, Angra Mainyu and his daevas take counsel over the death of Zarathustra, and the one who steps forward is Aka Manah: he puts the prophet through ninety-nine cruel, invidious questions. Zarathustra does not fall. The nineteenth-century orientalists recognised the mould of Oedipus and the Sphinx at once, and the Avesta itself repeats the motif elsewhere, with the sorcerer Akhtya and the young Yoishta. This daeva's weapon is neither claw nor poison: it is the question that cannot be answered without recanting. The text adds that the prophet was swinging «stones as big as a house» given to him by Ahura Mazda, and the Pahlavi commentary explains what those stones were: the Ahuna Vairya, the prayer. It is the same formula with which Ohrmazd drove Ahriman back in the first clash, and the same one the Yasna recites to smite Aeshma. Darmesteter noted in passing that this scene may lie behind the stoned Iblis of Islam, «the pelted one»; true or not, it describes well what happens here, because Aka Manah is not defeated by arguing.

Aka Manah has an exact opposite, and it is the first of them all: Vohu Manah, «Good Mind», first of the six Amesha Spentas. The Bundahishn says Ahriman created him among the first, right after Mitokht, Falsehood, and that his office is «to give vile thoughts and discord to the creatures». It also assigns him a collaborator, Anashtih, «non-peace», and a friend, Varan, concupiscence. But the detail that really portrays him is none of those. When Ahriman sends him to poison Zarathustra's thoughts, Vohu Manah prevents it and chases him away, and the prophet smiles. Sorrow is the sign of Akoman as joy is the sign of Vohuman: a cheerful man is lost ground for him. His defeat is written down twice. In Yasht 19 it is Vohu Manah who vanquishes him in the final battle, and at the Renovation the Bundahishn puts him first on the list, heading the roll of executioners: «Vohuman on Akoman».