SAOSHYANT. - From the Old Persian verb sav, meaning to benefit (whence the future participle saoshyant "benefactor"), in the most ancient Avesta it is a generic epithet of Zarathustra and of other beneficent spirits in the guise of liberators from the powers of evil. In Mazdean eschatology, which belongs to the later Avesta, that epithet is applied as a personal name to the liberator who at the end of the world will move to the assault and definitive defeat of the evil spirits that follow Arhiman. S. will be born from the seed of Zarathustra preserved for millennia in the waters of Lake Khaunsava (Ka[n]saoya, Yast, 19, 66) and absorbed by a virgin during a bath. In A.D. 2398 (since Zarathustra was born 3000 years after the creation of the first man Gáýomeretan and the world will end 3000 years from the time of Zarathustra, according to the traditional calculations of later Mazdeism: (Dhalla, op. cit. in bibl. p. 424) the conflagration of the world will take place and everything will end with the complete victory of the principle of Good, with the destruction of Angra Manyu and his evil spirits and with the renewal of the world.
Mithraism, which is an autonomous offshoot of Mazdeism that developed in Cappadocia, has identified S. with Mithra and makes the tauroctony the representation of the great final sacrifice with the tasting of bull's fat and of ambrosia (haoma), which will close the consummation of things (Bundahish, 30).
It should be noted that the idea of the future savior remained in Persia even after the country's forced conversion to Islam and can be recognized in the belief in the hidden imam, proper to Ismaili Shiism, an imam who will manifest himself to the world as guide (mahdi) when the times are ripe.
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Nicola Turchi