Yima and the Deadly Winters

Ahura Mazda offers the religion first to Yima, the good shepherd-king — who will not be its prophet, but agrees to make the world thrive. Three times Yima enlarges the earth with his golden seal when men and flocks overflow it. Then the gods warn him: deadly winters are coming to destroy every living thing. Yima builds the vara — an underground enclosure sheltering the seed of every man, beast, and plant, lit by a false sun — Persia's own ark against Persia's own flood.