Table of Contents
In Pre-Adamite Man (1863), Paschal Beverly Randolph retells a Persian story of the first man, whom he spells Kyomarz and also Kyomurz. He draws it from the Dabistan, a Persian book on religions, and places it at the end of a long run of world cycles that begins with Mahabad.
A First Man After the Old World Ends
Randolph says God made Kyomarz once the last corrupt age was over.
"When all this was done, God called into existence a being named Kyomarz, or Gil-Shah; and he was the father of all the present human race…"
Paschal Beverly Randolph, Pre-Adamite Man, 1863, p. 82
He adds that by this he means the Persians. In his account, God had let the people of the earlier cities destroy themselves through war and crime, and Kyomarz began the race that came after.
Clay King and First Man
Randolph explains the names one word at a time.
"Gil" means "clay," "Shah" means "king," "Kyomurz" means "First Man." Thus we have the first king; earth-king; king of the earth, and Adam.
Paschal Beverly Randolph, Pre-Adamite Man, 1863, p. 82
The Persian figure is better known today as Keyumars, or Gayomart in its Avestan form. In the Avesta he is the first human being, and in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh he is the first shah of the world. Zabihollah Safa, summing up the Middle Persian texts, gives his title as Gar-shāh and reads it as “King of the Mountains”, not “clay king”. In that telling Uhrmazd shaped him from mud, so the idea of clay is still there.
One Hundred Thousand Years
Randolph gives Gil-Shah a very early date.
The time that has elapsed since Gil-Shah lived must be computed at not less than one hundred thousand years.
Paschal Beverly Randolph, Pre-Adamite Man, 1863, p. 82
He does not say how this number is reached, beyond his remark that even after cutting most of the years from the Persian chronologies, a very long span is left.
The Deeves of Mazunduran
Randolph then turns to another story from the same book. A king of the Persians, whom he does not name, fought pitched battles with the Deeves, a class of spirits who built cities in the province of Mazunduran. The king beat them, and Randolph says the ruins of their cities still stand.
He asks whether this story echoes the war in heaven between Michael and Satan.
This is a very pretty conceit, but have we not something very like it concerning battles with spiritual beings, led on by Michael and Satan?
Paschal Beverly Randolph, Pre-Adamite Man, 1863, p. 82
The Dabistan
The book Randolph calls the Dabistan is the Dabestan-e Mazaheb, a Persian survey of religions written between 1645 and 1658. Fatḥ-Allāh Mojtabāʾī, writing in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, notes that it is now generally credited to Mīr Du’lfiqar Ardestānī, known as Mollā Mowbad. Randolph calls its age “very great indeed”, but the work itself dates from the seventeenth century. Readers who want the wider Persian background can turn to the page on Zoroaster, and the idea of people before Adam is covered on the page on the Pre-Adamites.
