SAOSHYANT. — From the verb sav, Old Persian, meaning to benefit (hence the future participle saoshyant, “benefactor”), in the most ancient Avesta it is a general epithet of Zarathustra and of other benevolent spirits represented as 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 attack and bring about the definitive defeat of the evil spirits who 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 2398 A.D. (since Zarathustra was born 3000 years after the creation of the first man Gáýomeretan, and the world will end 3000 years after 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, the destruction of Angra Manyu and his evil spirits, and the renewal of the world.
Mithraism, which is an autonomous offshoot of Mazdeism that developed in Cappadocia, identified S. with Mithra and made the tauroctony the representation of the great final sacrifice, with the tasting of bull fat and ambrosia (haoma), which will bring the consummation of things to a close (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, characteristic of Ismaili Shiism, an imam who will manifest himself to the world as its guide (mahdi) when the times are ripe.