Garshāsp

In Avestan literature Kərəsāspa is presented as son of Θrita and a member of the Sāma family; across successive traditions he is incorporated into epic genealogies as a ruling king and ancestor-hero. He appears in primordial mythic time (linked to Pishdadian-era chronologies and the era of Zahhāk) as a divinely favored monster-slayer and in later Zoroastrian texts is portrayed as a preserved corpse to be resurrected at the end of the world to battle Dahāg.

Sources provide no single, consistent physical portrait. Literary narratives depict him as a mighty warrior-king and youthful prodigy in epic poems (able in childhood to slay a dragon), commonly armed with lance or mace in iconographic captions and epic summaries. He is portrayed through actions—running along a dragon's back, wrestling a sea-monster for days, ruling and founding cities—rather than through standardized bodily description.

Across Avestan and later Zoroastrian and epic texts Garshāsp is credited with exceptional martial prowess and endurance: slaying dragons such as Aži Sruvara, fighting and flaying the sea-monster Gandarəβa after a prolonged struggle and binding it, surviving extreme combats (e.g., running along a dragon's back for hours, nine-day sea fights), campaigning abroad, restoring thrones and founding cities. In Zoroastrian eschatological accounts his corpse is preserved so he may be resurrected to slay the apocalyptic monster Dahāg and thereby save much of the world.