The Hymn to the God of the Contract

The Mihr Yasht is a long hymn of the Avesta dedicated to Mithra (Avestan Mithra, Middle Persian Mihr), the god of the covenant and of the light that precedes the sunrise, who watches over oaths and agreements and whose thousand ears and ten thousand eyes see whether they are kept. One of the longest and most important of the Yashts, the hymns to individual divine beings, it portrays Mithra as a mighty upholder of truth and punisher of the covenant-breaker, driving across the sky in his chariot, protecting the lands whose people are faithful and bringing ruin on those who lie. The hymn is a principal source for the character of this widely revered deity, whose worship extended far beyond Iran and who lies in the distant background of the Roman cult of Mithras. Preserved and recited within the Zoroastrian liturgy, the Mihr Yasht expresses the tradition's central concern with truth and the keeping of one's word, personified in a god who sees all and rewards fidelity and betrayal alike.

Mithra's Avestan portrait as the all-seeing guardian of covenants, positioned between the earthly and heavenly realms and never sleeping in his vigilance, has drawn extensive comparison from scholars of religion to the later Roman mystery cult of Mithras, though the exact relationship between the Iranian yazata and the Roman god remains a genuinely disputed question, since the Roman cult's iconography and initiatory structure have no clear precedent in the surviving Avestan material. Within Zoroastrianism itself the Mihr Yasht remains part of the liturgy recited on the days and in the month dedicated to Mithra in the Zoroastrian calendar.