Vahagn

The world went into labour all at once. Heaven strained, earth strained, and the purple sea strained with them, and out in that water stood one small red reed, shaking. Smoke rose through the hollow of the stalk. Then flame came up the same channel. Then a boy ran out of the fire with burning hair, a beard of flame, and eyes that were not merely bright but were suns.

Movses Khorenatsi set those lines down in the fifth century and did not claim them. He was recording a song already old when he heard it, and he gave only its opening. What he says about the rest is the tantalising part: the song went on to tell how Vahagn fought the vishaps and beat them. Then he stops. The rest of the song is gone. What survives of the greatest deed of Armenia’s most beloved god is a job title, vishapakagh, the dragon-reaper, and the word is worth pausing on. It is not slayer. It is reaper, the verb you use for pulling something up out of the ground.

The vishaps he pulled up were the dragons of the Armenian plateau, serpentine and associated with water and storm, and Armenian writers of the Christian centuries kept circling back to them. Eznik of Koghb, arguing against pagan belief in the fifth century, mentions the oxen involved in hauling vishaps up out of the world. Modern Armenian villagers told a version in which the work never stopped and only the workman changed: the angel Gabriel now watches for vishaps growing dangerously large, plucks them out, and throws them into the sun. Fifteen hundred years of Christianity and the job description survived intact.

The name came from Iran. Vahagn is the Armenian form of Parthian Warahragn, and behind that stands Avestan Verethragna, the yazata of victory, and behind that the Vedic Vrtrahan, the dragon-smashing epithet of Indra. The borrowing is beyond dispute, since Armenian took most of its religious vocabulary from Middle Iranian. What the borrowing does not explain is the dragon. Georges Dumezil noticed that the Avestan Verethragna does not actually fight a serpent, while the Vedic figure does and Vahagn emphatically does, which makes the Armenian god look less like a straight import than his name suggests. Armen Petrosyan has argued that Vahagn was an older Armenian deity who put on an Iranian name and kept his own biography. The dragon-fighting may reach back further still, to the Hurro-Urartian storm god Teshub, who was worshipped in the region long before Armenian was spoken there and whose name is buried in the old name of Van.

His house stood at Ashtishat in the province of Taron, on the slopes of a mountain called Karke, and it was not his alone. He shared the site with Anahit and with Astghik, whose name means little star and who was reckoned his bride. The priests were the Vahevunis, a noble family who traced their line directly back to him and held the temple as an inheritance, so that the men tending the fire could name the god as a grandfather. The twenty-seventh day of every month in the old Armenian calendar carried his name. So did the planet Mars, which Armenians called Atraher, fire-hair, after the boy from the reed. Agathangelos preserves a royal greeting in which King Tiridates wishes his people health from the gods: fullness from manly Aramazd, providence from Anahit the Lady, and bravery from brave Vahagn. Brave is his standing epithet, kaj, the same word Armenians used for a whole race of wild supernatural beings living in the mountains.

He was also a thief. Anania Shirakatsi, writing in the seventh century, tells how Vahagn stole straw from Barsham during a bitter winter and ran for home across the sky, scattering as he went. The trail of dropped straw is still up there. Armenians called the Milky Way Hardagoghi chanaparh, the way of the straw thief, and the god who lit it was the same one who set fire to dragons. Anania knew another story too, in which Barsham, a weather god of white glory, fought him outright.

Greek contact gave him a second identity. In the Hellenistic period Vahagn was matched with Heracles, and the match stuck so firmly that when Armenian translators produced their Bible in the fifth century and reached a mention of Heracles in Second Maccabees, they simply wrote Vahagn. Khorenatsi says the lost part of the song told of deeds worthy of that comparison. A more occasional pairing put him with Apollo, the sun again. Armenians still call the constellation Hercules by his name.

The end came quickly. After King Tiridates converted early in the fourth century, Gregory the Illuminator went to Ashtishat and pulled the temple down. The choice of target was not arbitrary. It was the most important cult centre in the country, which is exactly why the church built on its rubble became the first Mother See of the Armenian Church. The new shrine was dedicated to John the Baptist, and John absorbed a good deal of the god he replaced, including his role as a protector of travellers on the road.

His powers all run out of the same source. He is fire, so he is light, heat, and the sun; he is the storm that comes with the dragons and the force that clears them away; he is courage itself, the thing a soldier asks for by name before a fight. He is not a god of mercy, fertility or wisdom, and no one asked him for those. The limits are stranger. His great enemy is a creature whose story we no longer have, his defining act reaches us as a single compound word, and his most human moment is a winter burglary he botched badly enough to leave a trail across the sky. He could be destroyed on earth, and was, by a bishop with a work crew.

He came back anyway. Armenian poets of the early twentieth century, writing under the pressure of national revival, reached for Vahagn as the image of a people being born out of fire, and Hovhannes Hovhannisyan opened his 1904 poem with what is very nearly a straight translation of Khorenatsi’s fragment. Modern Armenian neopagans have gone further, making him their central god and chanting the birth song as ritual, with an annual festival at the temple of Garni in late March. That festival is a twentieth-century creation and not an inherited rite. The song it uses, though, is genuinely ancient, and every recitation of it is a reed catching light again.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Vahagn?

Vahagn is the Armenian god of fire, war, courage and victory, and one of the three chief deities of pre-Christian Armenia alongside Aramazd and Anahit. His name comes from Parthian Warahragn, related to the Iranian Verethragna and the Vedic Vrtrahan. He is best known from a fragment of an ancient song recorded by the historian Movses Khorenatsi in the fifth century.

Why is Vahagn called the Dragon-Reaper?

Vahagn carries the title vishapakagh, meaning reaper of vishaps, the dragons of Armenian tradition. Movses Khorenatsi states that the song about Vahagn described how he fought and conquered the vishaps, but that portion of the song has not survived. The dragon-fighting role may have been inherited from the older Hurro-Urartian storm god Teshub.

What is the Song of Vahagn?

The Song of Vahagn is a short surviving fragment of ancient Armenian oral poetry, written down by Movses Khorenatsi in his History of the Armenians. It describes heaven, earth and the purple sea in labour, a red reed in the water releasing smoke and then flame, and a red-haired youth running out of the fire with hair of fire, a beard of flame and eyes like suns. It is one of the oldest pieces of Armenian verse to survive and is often cited as a striking example of Indo-European poetry.

Where was Vahagn worshipped?

Vahagn’s chief temple stood at Ashtishat in the province of Taron, on the slopes of Mount Karke, where he was worshipped together with Anahit and with Astghik, who was regarded as his bride. Its priests belonged to the Vahevuni noble house, who claimed descent from the god. Gregory the Illuminator destroyed the temple after Armenia’s conversion in the early fourth century, and the church built on the site became the first Mother See of the Armenian Church.

How did Vahagn create the Milky Way?

According to a myth recorded by the seventh-century writer Anania Shirakatsi, Vahagn stole straw from Barsham during a hard winter and scattered it across the sky as he fled home. The spilled straw became the Milky Way, which Armenians call Hardagoghi chanaparh, the way of the straw thief.

Related Entries

Aramazd, Anahit, Vishap, Aralez, Al, Mher, Teshub, Ullikummi, Mithra, Ahura Mazda, Indra, Agni, Heracles (Hercules), Saint George