Abstract
Kanishka the Great of the Kushan issued a gold type which figures on its reverse a deity on a dicephalous horse whom the legend designates MOZΔOOANO (fig.2). Duchesne-Guillemin identified him with ωOPOMOZΔO “Ahura Mazdâ” on a gold issue of Huvishka I (fig. 3), and read the legend as “Mazdâ the Vanquisher”. Humbach, contra this, doubted Mazdâ worship in the Kushan, partly by suspecting the authenticity of ωOPOMOZΔO coins, and interpreted the legend as “Winner of Wisdom”. A Bactrian inscription of Kanishka the Great, discovered in 1993 at Rabatak (North Afghanistan) and published by Sims-Williams (1995/96), declares that Kanishka worshipped both Ahura Mazdâ and MOZΔOOANO as different gods and that both of the views above mentioned are not the case. 7 deities of the inscription correspond virtually, considered the interchangeability between the deities in Awesta, to those of Kanishka's gold coins (fig. 1). In Awesta they form Mithraic circle, and we find “remainder” each one in the circle and in the inscription and coins. The former is Fravaši, the latter MOZΔOOANO (<*Mazdâ-van). In all Awestan invocations of Fravašis they are addressed as aša-van and the synonymity of aša- with Mazdâ- is well attested. It is highly probable, supposed in an unorthodox Zoroastrian society like that of the Kushans whose supreme god is not Ahura Mazdâ but seemed Mithra, that Fravašis were worshipped under their own designation *Mazdâ-van which might have been robbed of them by the orthodox who used Mazdâ- almost invariably as the name of the Lord (Ahura).
Only one figure ever found who rides in the way as MOZΔOOANO does is the ancestral images of the Káfir-Kalásh (figs. 5, 6) who survive in Hindukush valleys holding fast their own tongues (as archaic as those of Veda and Awesta) and —at least as to the Kalásh— own pagan religion. Their cults of ancestors, not only their making the wooden images, but the festival called Mandahík (meaning “coming of the deads”) which is well comparable with Hamaspaθmaêdaya, Zoroastrian festival for Fravašis (ancestral spirits), are linked up with warriors' god Mahandéw who is in a Kalásh myth also a rider on a dicephalous horse and only his altars have additional 2 (totally 4) wooden horse-heads (fig. 7). Mahandéw is, so to speak, a kind of archetype of ancient Indian war god Indra as a complex of divine beings and heroes (see Benveniste & Renou 1934). Fravašis are sometimes fearful warriors and Awestan descriptions of them are, as Wikander pointed out, comparable with those of Indra and his men (Maruts) in Rig-Veda. MOZΔOOANO, like the images of warrior-ancestors of the Káfir-Kalásh, and not like other Kushan deities, is figured as an armed Kushan monarch. The riders on a dicephalous horse common to the Kushan and the Káfir-Kalásh must be considered, not as an coincidence or as a result of direct connections between them, but in the Indo-Iranian context.
