Abaris

Source: TW

Abaris son of Seuthes is a likely non-Zoroastrian, Iranic ritualist operating among the yavana-s. We could see him as an Iranic “pAshupata”-like figure. He is said to have composed several works titled the

1. Scythian oracles;
2. The marriage of river Hebrus;
3. Purificatory rites
4. A prose theogony;
5. Apollo’s coming to the Hyperboreans.

He is said to have been a contemporary of Pythagoras & the yavana-s record him as the author of numerous incantations, especially for medical use. He is said to have established a temple to a godddess at Sparta that the yavana-s identified with the awful Persephone.

He is said to have held an arrow or flown around on the arrow of Apollo. This ain’t a yavana motif. Instead, it brings to mind the tishtrya yasht wherein the eponymous rudra-class deity is said to fly around like an arrow shot by the archer erekhsha, whom the Iranians termed the Arya of the Arya-s. tishtrya is the protector of “the seed of water in the stars” – an Iranic idea similar to that seen in the Aryan “yo.apAm puShpam…” yajuSh chant. We suspect even Abaris might have an Iranic root with ap>ab water.

In any case Abaris might have been an early point of melding of the yavana & Iranic rudrian traditions on the fringes of the western steppes. Abaris is also believed to have transmitted the entrails prognostication, mentioned in this Orphic fragment to the yavana-s. The later-day Mongols appear to have acquired the same from the Iranics on the Eastern steppes.