Jamshid

In the Vendidad of the Avesta Yima is first a good shepherd whom Ahura Mazda summons to receive law; Yima initially is asked to accept law but ultimately is appointed and invested to rule and nourish the earth. Ahura Mazda bestows on him a golden seal and a dagger (poniard) inlaid with gold. Acting under that mandate Yima founds an ideal reign in the mythic early past as the fourth king of the Pishdadians and rules for expansive, specified periods (three hundred years initially, followed by further reigns after ritual expansions of the earth totaling up to nine hundred years in the cited account). Later Middle and New Persian literature preserves him as Jam/Jamshid, the radiant culture‑hero and archetypal sovereign in epic memory.

Avestan texts and summaries emphasize radiance as his principal mark: Yima xšaēta means 'radiant Yima,' and the Vendidad repeatedly describes him as 'shining with light.' A fragmentary later motif (not in the core Vendidad passage) records a detachable halo associated with Jamshid that departs in the form of a Varagh bird and is seized by Mithra; this halo motif is preserved in a secondary fragmentary source rather than in the primary Vendidad excerpt here.

Jamshid/Yima receives divine instruments and a mandate from Ahura Mazda to govern and 'nourish the earth.' Using the golden seal and the gold‑inlaid dagger he performs ritual acts — pressing the seal and boring the earth while invoking Spenta Armaiti — that cause the earth to 'swell' and expand its capacity for flocks, herds, and human beings. Under his reign people prosper and attain unusually long youthful lives; he also deprives the daevas (servants of Ahriman) of wealth and reputation, countering malevolent forces. He attends a divine meeting in Airyanem Vaejah as narrated in the Vendidad, indicating his role as a favored human recipient of divine counsel in that text.