Mithras in India and Iran
The Angel Surush Rescues Khusrau Parviz from a Cul-de-sac, Folio 708v from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp (c. 1530–1535)
Nowadays, most Western scholars agree that the Roman mysteries of Mithras have little, if any, relation to the Iranian and Indian cult of the same god. Still, it is always interesting to recall when, in the wake of Franz Cumont, scholars followed the eastern end of Ariadne’s thread to unravel the many (and persistent) enigmas about the origins and the very identity of the Mithraic cult.
We have selected an extract from one of Marteen Vermaseren’s most popular books: Mithras, the Secret God. In particular, we propose a passage in which the prolific Dutch author succeeds in unravelling hitherto unknown clues.
In 1907 a large number of clay tablets was found in the palace archives of Bogazköy, the capital of the ancient Hittites in the north of the Anatolian plateau. These tablets contain the first recorded mention of the name ‘Mithra’, who, together with the Lord of Heaven, is invoked as the protector of a treaty between the Hatti (the Hittites) and their neighbours, the Mitanni. The date of the treaty is somewhere in the fourteenth century B.C., and since the latest known reference to the Western Mithras occurs in the fifth century A.D. these tablets show that the god was revered for nearly two thousand years.
Mithras is of course worshipped no longer, but archaeologists, historians of religion, theologians and linguists alike have pondered his nature and tried to unravel the secrets of his cult for the light which these studies have to throw on the origins of Christianity.
One insurmountable difficulty confronts the student of the Mithraic mysteries. For the Eastern form of Mithraism practically nothing except documentary evidence exists, whereas the Mithras of the Roman world is known to us almost exclusively from non-literary sources. That brilliant scholar, Franz Cumont, who died in 1947, has neatly summed up the position in his Die Mysterien des Mithra: ‘It is,’ he writes, ‘as if it were only possible to study Christianity through the Old Testament and the mediaeval cathedrals.’ Because of this great gap, the story of Mithras is bound to be incomplete and distorted, and those who wish to read it must wait for and assimilate the fresh discoveries which are made year by year.
Some of the first Indo-Europeans had already adopted Mithras into their religions system
The early Hittite treaty from Bogazköy proves that some of the first Indo-Europeans had already adopted Mithras into their religions system, and so it is no surprise to find references to him in documents from early India as well as Iran. In the Veda, the sacred writings of India, he occurs frequently as ‘Mitra’, literally ‘treaty’; in the Avesta, the holy book of the Persians, he is called ‘Mithra’ and a yasht, a special hymn of praise, is dedicated to him. Both in the Veda and the Avesta, Mithra is associated with the supreme being, Varuna or Ahura Mazda, and shares their attributes, but different concepts of his nature have to be distinguished in these writings, since they combine sources of considerable antiquity with later material. Consequently Mithra does not always appear in the same character, and interpretations of him vary from time to time. Scholars who are familiar with these Eastern texts agree that in the early period Mithra was held in such honour that he competed for the crown with the lord of heaven.
To understand the place of Mithra in Iran it is necessary to keep in mind the division of the Persian pantheon into two major groups. On the one hand are the deities associated with Ahura Mazda, the all-wise, who rules over the sublime realm of light, while on the other are the powers associated with Ahriman, the god of darkness. The two groups are in continual opposition to each other, but there will come a day when the forces of good will conquer the forces of evil. In this struggle Mithra has the status of a yazata, that is to say, an ally. He fights in the ranks of the good and righteous. He is a god of light, who in India was already regarded as the sun. Like the Homeric Helios he is all-seeing, and so an avenger of injustice and of everything in opposition to the ordained pattern of the universe.
In one sense, therefore, Mithra is a god of the element of light, and in another he has a place in the cult of Ahura Mazda; he is an extension of the idea of the supreme god from whom he takes his actual being. Just as the supreme god himself is surrounded by attendant powers, Amesha Spentas, who strictly speaking constitute his being, so the Indian Mithra also has lesser divinities around him, such as Aryaman, ‘the protector of the destiny of the Aryans’, and Bhaga, ‘providence’, who dispenses fortune. In ancient Persia these two attendant figures survive as Sraosha and Ashi and are to be identified with the two followers of Mithras who appear in the much later mysteries as Cautes and Cautopates.
Zardosht (Zoroaster) at the Takyeh Moaven-ol-Molk, Kermânšâh, Iran, based on an ancient representation of Mithra.
Belief in the great power of Mithra was called in question by Zarathushtra or Zoroaster, the great prophet who worked mainly in Eastern Iran and who lived some time between 1000 and 600 B.C. — The exact date is very widely disputed, but in the present state of our knowledge the latter date is the more probable. — It is a major drawback that his character has largely to be reconstructed from the Gathas, devotional hymns attributed to the prophet and written in an archaic and abstruse Eastern Iranian dialect which is extremely difficult to translate.
It is, however, an established fact that Zarathushtra was a great reformer, who attempted to transform the established polytheism into a monotheist pattern with Ahura Mazda as the sole and supreme god, and so found himself obliged to relegate Mithra to the background. He also attacked the forms of worship of his time, forbidding blood sacrifice such as the bull-offering and denying to his followers the ecstatic enjoyment of the spirituous Haoma. This measure in particular dealt a heavy blow to the Mithra cult, for Mithra was — as we shall see — closely associated with the bull, whose blood, mixed with the Haoma, bestowed immortality.
Whether or not his teaching was subsequently accepted by rulers of the Achaemenid dynasty such as Darius and Xerxes, it is clear that Zarathushtra never succeeded in entirely suppressing the popular feeling for Mithra. At the vey beginning of his career the poet-prophet experienced strong opposition which was to lead to his eventual murder in a temple. Thus in subsequent writings of the Avesta, in the tenth hymn for example, Mithra is reinstated in all his glory. This yasht breathes the true spirit of the popular cult, and the prophet’s influence is only to be seen dimly when the all-wise God speaks to Spitama Zarathushtra: ‘When I created grass-land magnate Mithra, O Spitamid, I made such in worthiness to be worshipped and prayed to as myself, Ahura Mazdah’ (Yasht x,1).
Other passages from the tenth hymn speak for themselves:
You protect the countries in the same measure in which they strive to take care of grass-land Mithra; you destroy the countries to the same extent to which they are defiant. I invoke you for assistance: may he join us for assistance, Mithra the strong, notorious splendid, master of countries, worthy to be worshipped, worthy to be prayed to!
(Yasht x,78)
I will worship Mithra, who is good, strong, supernatural, foremost, merciful, incomparable, high-dwelling, a mighty strong warrior. Valiant, he is equipped with a well-fashioned weapon, he who watches in darkness, the undeceivable. He is what (is) mightiest among the very mighty, he is what (is) strongest among the very strong; he has by far the greatest insight among the gods. Fortune attends him, the valiant, who with his thousand ears and ten thousand eyes is the strong, all-knowing, undeceivable master of ten thousand spies.
(Yasht x, 170-1)
Throughout the whole of this yasht there are references to Mithra’s power, his greatness, and his readiness to fight, which specially endeared him to his followers and remained among his attributes for as long as he was honoured. In later centuries, too, these particular qualities inspired the votaries of Mithraic mysteries.
Mithras in the Indian world
In Indian writings such as the Veda Mithra again appears as the attendant of the Lord of Heaven, Varuna. He is closely connected with the power of light and the sun, which is itself called ‘the eye of Mitra and Varuna’. The connection between Mitra and the bull, which later became the focal point of the Mithras cult, is perhaps even clearer in the Veda than in the Avesta.
Thanks to Professor H. Lommel, a number of Vedic texts have been translated and can, so he believes, be associated with Mithras, the bull-slayer. Lommel’s starting-point is the god of life, Soma, who is the same as Haoma and represents the rain which springs from the moon. He gives life to plants and so nourishes human beings and animals alike.
In creatures of the male sex the sap of the plant is changed into fertile seed, in the female to milk. At death the life so given returns again to the moon and during the waxing of the moon Soma recovers this life force, refilling himself as if he were a bowl and so becoming the god’s monthly portion of immortality. In the myth Soma, as rain, is both the semen of the sacred bull who fertilises the earth, and the milk of the all-nourishing heavenly cow.
Varuna, Bundi, Rajasthan, India. Gift of the Felix and Helen Juda Foundation.
The gods, wishing to partake of the portion because of its gift of immortality, devise a plan to murder the Soma plant which is in fact Soma himself. The Wind-god Vayu agrees and Mitra too is invited to become an accomplice in the murder. The gods speak to Mitra, ‘he, whose name means friend’: ‘We wish to kill King Soma.’ He said: ‘Not I, for I am friend to all.’ They said to him ‘Still we will slay him.’ In the end Mithra, having been promised a share in the sacrifice, assists in the murder after all, but as result he runs the risk of losing his ascendancy over the cattle, for the beasts turn against him with the towards: ‘Though he is friend (Mitra) he has done a terrible deed.’ Even Varuna takes a hand in the killing of Soma, who is murdered by being crushed under a weight of stones as in one of the cult ceremonies when the juice is extracted from the stem of the Soma-plant.
Soma supplies the life blood and the drink which is enjoyed by gods, priests and participants in the rite. Thus man is granted immortality, though through the agency of death from which only the gods are exempt.
It is interesting to compare the evidence of the Veda with that of the Avesta and particularly with the group of texts called the Bundahishn, in which the archetypal bull is killed and then the plants are created. In the later Mithras cult the god Soma-Haoma no longer appears, but tradition preserved the killing of the bull and its resultant gift of resurrection and so the connection between the Indo-Iranian cult of Mit(h)ra and the Western myth of Mithras the bull-slayer was preserved.
References
- Maarten Jozef Vermaseren (1963) Mithras, the Secret God
Comments
Excellent article looks like a valuable book with interesting leads. I found similar information in these two books attached below in the photo. They consist of a long series of short legends from many sources from India including Vedic, Mahabharata, Buddhist, Hindu, and regional Indian myth. Many of the stories mention very similar concepts related to the Mithras mysteries and a few even directly mentioned him as stated in the above article. Seems as if in India they had a very similar practices, That were eventually deemed sacrilegious by the Hindu and Buddhist, or possibly only acceptable for the high priest of the religion. The stories are so short and there is not much of a narrative, almost just one myth after another, a few explanations here or there, there is so many of them, bits and pieces of subtle correlations can be grasped… it’s best red in small sections at a time and pondered, because you’re constantly starting a new story, every few paragraphs or every few pages. It can be a very interesting but takes time to wrap your head around a whole other cultural mythical tradition.
They mentioned interaction with Aryan peoples on their western borders there’s also mention of people of the Himalayas, China and Southeast Asia. Their legends and traditions appeared to have a strange subtle commonality, with the Mithras ,tradition of Iran and Persia.
One benefit about studying mystical traditions from different culture is that each culture disguises certain aspects and reveals others leading to a more complete picture overtime. Up to this point I’ve mostly been studying the western tradition and near east. But I think each great civilization has a piece of the puzzle. If you had a master, teacher, you could probably stay within one culture, but most of us are probably blazing trails on our own, so the cross culture references may reveal things that one culture’s literary tradition keeps in obscurity.
At some point we have to start use our imagination.
More archaeological evidence and new found references will only take one so far. The ancient did not write down the exact rituals. This seems to apply across all cultures. But they did leave clues shrouded in obscurity, lying there waiting in utter stillness for a generation longing to know, patient to search, and willing to listen.
There is concerted effort to bury Mithra religion and other similar traditions.
After all in Rome, it was a military cult religious practice and in the Indian stories it seemed like people that knew these practices were very hard to subdue conquer or control they seem extra crafty and cunning. There are numerous hints of this in the western Canon as well. Might not want a population of bunch of divinely inspired upstarts. There may be some revolutionary aspects of this also in the Maya or Incan hieroglyphic texts as well. Makes sense that a dominant power would strip the technique from the population. The giver of divinely just laws, or a cunning advisor for a military coup. I don’t think so. You won’t be needing that.
Maybe these traditions needed to go away for a while so that modern society could be developed. Looks like these traditions were more out in the open in less centralized societies. India appeared to consist of many small kingdoms and regions. Once centralization happens the practice appears to become more secretive and eventually all but disappear.
What happens in our modern centralized society if we relearn what our ancestors held in high regard?
Many translations of ancient sources seem to intentionally miss translate key words and concepts to keep certain aspects shrouded in obscurity. Also Sacred practices were held in secrecy by the ancient them selves.
This sacred silence was an important part of the tradition and should be maintained. For reasons we may not comprehend at this point. Every culture on earth seemed to move towards more and more secrecy once they reached a certain point of development.
In fact, they were held in such tight secrecy that they’ve almost went extinct or have modern secretive groups,? and elite lineages been aware all along?
These texts, images and myth are intelligently designed to transmit information to those who long to know and have pure intentions. The facts are sparse the gaps are vast the detail is all but nonexistent. Yet there is just enough that survived (the darkening age.) with trial by fire, a few casualties and a little luck we may proceed in due time.
Thank you for another great article that sheds light on this obscure part of history.
We enjoyed this article. Unfortunately, ALL RELIGIONS today share cultish behaviors and attitudes. People are quick to use the term "cult." Without regarding that all religions act the same hostile prejudiced way toward those that don’t follow them.
We respect religions and those that make their religious choices. We briefly share what we have concluded so far regarding Mitra|Mithra. The research continues.
We, too, would like to find more concrete foundational evidence on Mitra|Mithra, the phantom deity.
Wikipedia is a very flawed, third party information website. Freshman year in college, we were discouraged to cite any sources from it. Wikipedia is at the top of the search page because it’s for lazy people needing a quick answer. Google owns it. That’s also why it’s at the top of the page and the most clicked. We don’t use it. We’d rather scroll down AND search for ORIGINAL content, from the original source. We also ask human search engines for assistance when necessary. They are, Human Researchers with the ability to find what lies vastly beyond the Internet. With AI, original meanings and definitions are edited, destroyed and inaccurately revised.
This article sums it up beautifully in paragraph 5 above. "Because of this great gap, the story of Mithras is bound to be incomplete and distorted, and those who wish to read it must wait for and assimilate the fresh discoveries which are made year by year."
Aspects of Indian/Hindu Guru-student teachings involved the guru whispering mantras into the ear of the student and giving the student specific sadhanas. Nothing was written. That was between the guru and pupil. It took centuries to pen the Vedas. It’s also difficult to capture Vedic / Ancient Sanskrit utterances, words, phrases and songs into understood concepts.
Mitra|Mithra shares that beauty, also. There may not a lot of written documents. Because of that, the foundational truths that support this deity’s existence are few. What remained should have been left alone and not destroyed.
Mitra|Mithra’s complete existence has been discarded. Dieties don’t stop existing because we can’t find/figure out the pieces of the puzzle.
Where we are, at this moment in time, is uncovering an erased truth. It is said that in the Torah/christian bible/old testament book titled, "Esther," there is no mention of the name God. We have researched this as well. The carefully detailed documented text depicts a Jewish girl abducted to later become the Queen of Persia. Her life before she became queen. She married a Persian king. As a result she saved her race from annihilation. A great story!
What’s missing? A lot. The Persian King she married. His practices of worship. The deity /dieties he served. Did he worship Mitra|Mithra? The king married a Jewish girl and there’s NO mention of God. Kings are renowned for worshipping dieties on behalf of their dynasty, before they go to war, the threat of war and on behalf of their people. Esther gave birth to a son with a Persian-Greek name. To completely leave out the Persian deity worshipped during the time of Esther was definitely another way to erase Mitra|Mithra’s existence. Did Esther adopt the practices of her land, Persia? (Someone will read this, write an article to refute Mitra was not worshipped by Esther’s husband, a Persian King. Please don’t waste your time.)
Finally, one of Shiva’s avatars is destruction. The destroyer to make room for rebirth. Shiva has a massive following of Hindu and global devotees, and yet sits in Samadhi for centuries. By collective agreement, we believe, the beauty of Shiva like Mitra is that they don’t seek or need worship. Shiva wants us to fulfill our duty as it relates to Dharma while we avoid falling into karmic traps like regret and attachments. More than likely, Mitra is working behind the scenes making sure we uphold our Dharmic contracts. Mitra remains, the guardian of contracts.
As you can see, our research continues. It seems to us that Mitra|Mithra was a MAJOR threat to christianity. Early church fathers/christians demonized Hinduism and Buddhism, the world’s oldest religions. Thanks to Max Mueller who coined the term, Hindu Mythology. Somehow, it was determined Mitra|Mithra and the worship had to be destroyed. First, by christians infiltrating their meetings. According to documents, christianity was established in 325AD. Hundreds of years after the crucifixion. That was enough time to scour the earth and completely erase the existence of Mitra|Mithra.
Choosing to leave the image of the bull blood is supposed to convey why Mitra|Mithra was erased.
They didn’t cover their tracks well.
We know many christians. To date, they say things like, "I’m saved because of the BLOOD of Christ." "I plead the BLOOD of Christ against my enemies." They participate in the symbolic blood drinking ritual known as communion and eat crackers to symbolize eating the body of Christ.
The Mithra slaying the bull image was a reason to erase him and leave ONLY that piece of artwork. Yet, to date, christians participate in:
(A) part human-part god blood worship,
(B) part human-part god cannibalism in the form of eating the body AND drinking the blood.
(C) Mithra’s date of birth was also December 25th.
In other words, they stole the Mitra|Mithra concept of the bull sacrifice. Destroyed the origin this originated from. Destroyed the followers. Then, labeled their PRIVATE practices as cult worship. They plagiarized the concept of sacrificing the bull, repackaged it (with a bow) as truth and that same concept became the core tenet of christianity. Christians are taught that their belief in a part-god, part-human’s blood and body, Saves them.
Mitra|Mithra was destroyed to prevent Christians from discovering the truth.
Was co-existing with Mitra|Mithra an option? Anything other than annihilation, would serve as a reminder of the identity theft, and origin of the blood worship and murders. Generations later, all is forgotten.
Today, what was done back then would be considered a crime. By today’s standards, Mitra|Mithra, and the followers were victims of identity theft and religious hatred.
We stand on this truth:
Dieties don’t disappear because:
1) Their identity was stolen,
2) Their existence was erased and
3) Their followers were killed.
Thank you for leaving this article online. We request that you email this article with the comments. Often times, truth is removed from the Internet by blocking future access to the site.
History’s truth will always stand.
Namaste.
10/18/25
An ayahuasca analog would have been mixed in the krater and drunk by Mithras worshipers.
Two ingredients are required to make the ayahuasca analog brew, and these two ingredients are symbolized by the lion (fire) and serpent (water), who we both see drinking from the Mithraic krater.
Ayahuasca induced visions almost always contain visions of animals, and the two most frequently seen animals are....serpents and felines!
A FINE NOTE AND WILL LIKE TO KNOW MORE IN INDIAN CONTEXT ALSO TO SEND MY INDIAN INPUTS
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