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(originally dew , Avestan daeva , Sanskrit dēva ), in Persian the name of the spirits of evil and of darkness, creatures of Ahriman, the personification of sins; their number is legion; among them are to be distinguished a group of seven principal demons, including Ahriman, opposed to the seven Ams̲h̲aspand (Av. aməša spənta , the “Immortal Holy Ones”). “The collective name of the daiva designates ... exclusively the inimical gods in the first place, then generally other supernatural beings who, being by nature evil, are opposed to the good and true faith .... These daiva, these dēv have become increasingly assimilated to the ogres and other demoniac beings whose origins are to be found in ancestral beliefs” (A. Christensen). In the Iranian epic Kayūmart̲h̲, the first of the civilizing kings of Īrān, and then his son and his grandson, fought the Black Dīw and his hordes; Tahmurat̲h̲, his great-grandson, deprived them of power, and they taught him writing (Firdawsī, S̲h̲āh-nāma , Fr. tr. J. Mohl, i, 19-32); Ḏj̲ams̲h̲īd, son of Tahmurat̲h̲ (ibid., 35), controlled the dīws (as Solomon did the d̲j̲inns in the Muslim legend [see sulaymān b. dāwūd ]); these, on his orders, constructed palaces and other buildings, then took him to heaven on a day later called nawrūz ; under the following dynasty, that of the Kayanids in the course of the war against the king of Māzandarān—a country frequented by the dīws (ibid., 421 ff.)—the hero Rustam, champion of the king Kay-Kawūs, killed the dīw Arzang whose hordes he dispersed, and then the White Dīw whose blood, which he carried to the king of Īrān, cured him of incipient blindness (cf. the fish-gall which restored sight to Tobit). In the Gars̲h̲āsp-nāma (see asadī ) that hero, the great-grandfather of Rustam, several times opposed dīws of monstrous form ( Livre de Gerchasp , tr. Massé, ii, 46, 48, 129-31, 190).
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(1,034 words)
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(1,034 words)