Čihrdād nask

The Čihrdād was a named nask within the Sasanian Avesta collection, one of approximately twenty-one nasks known in that corpus. Its contents—reconstructed from later summaries—presented a continuous legendary history beginning with the first man, Gayomard, and proceeding through the Pishdadian and Kayanian kings up to the revelation of Zarathustra. The nask's title has been read as Čihrdād or Kitradād; the second element was historically interpreted as dād ('law'), which likely led to its classification among so-called 'legal nasks', but modern etymological interpretation favors a derivation from *čiθrō.dāti suggesting 'the establishment/ordering of origins', aligning the work with origin-history rather than juridical material. Knowledge of the nask comes entirely from later Zoroastrian texts—the Denkard (Book 8, chapter 12) offers the most extensive summary, and the Rivayats (15th–17th century letters) provide briefer discussions—because the original Avestan nask itself is lost.

The Čihrdād is a textual work rather than a visible supernatural being. No original manuscript survives; descriptions in the surviving sources concern content and estimated length rather than physical codices. Scholarly reconstructions based on summaries have estimated about 2,600 words of Avestan text with roughly 23,400 words of Pahlavi translation and commentary (an estimate attributed to Edward William West), but these figures describe reconstructed composition and commentary rather than an extant physical artefact.

As a canonical nask, the Čihrdād exercised cultural and intellectual influence: it conveyed an authoritative legendary chronology and genealogical framework used to situate human history and dynastic legitimacy within Zoroastrian cosmology. It was a source for later historiographical and literary works (its sequence of rulers accords with lists preserved by later Islamic writers and it contributed to the materials that informed later Persian epic and historical traditions). The nask served interpretively to explain and justify social and dynastic order in the Sasanian cultural-religious milieu. No supernatural agency or magical powers are ascribed to the text in the surviving summaries.