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22 ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
one may be reasonably sure that both in Armenia and in Persia,
it was an agricultural celebration connected with commemo
ration of the dead (see also chapter on Shahapet) and aiming
at the increase of the rain and the harvests. In fact al-Biruni 8
informs us that in Navasard the Persians sowed "around a
plate seven kinds of grain
in seven columns and from their
growth they drew conclusions regarding the corn of that
9
Also they poured water upon themselves and others,
year."
a custom which still prevails among Armenians at the spring
sowing and at the festival of the Transfiguration in June. 10
This was originally an act of sympathetic magic to insure rain.
Navasard s connection with Fravarti (Armen. Hrotik), the
month consecrated to the ancestral souls in Persia and perhaps
also in Armenia, is very significant, for these souls are in the old
Aryan religion specially interested in the fertility of the land.
The later (Christian) Navasard in August found the second
crop of wheat on the threshing floor or safely garnered,
the trees laden with mellowing fruit and the vintage in prog
ress. 11
In many localities the Navasard took the character
of a fete champetre celebrated near the sanctuaries, to which
the country people flocked with their sacrifices and gifts, their
rude music and rustic dances. But it was also observed in the
towns and great cities where the more famous temples of Aramazd
attracted great throngs of pilgrims. A special men
tion of this festival is made by Moses (II, 66) in connection
with Bagavan, the town of the gods. Gregory Magistros
(eleventh century) says that King Artaxias (190 B.C.) on his
death-bed, longing for the smoke streaming upward from the
chimneys and floating over the villages and towns on the New
Year s morning, sighed:
" O
! would that I might see the smoke of the chimneys,
And the morning of the New Year s day,
The running of the oxen and the coursing of the deer!
(Then) we blew the horn and beat the drum as it beseemeth
Kings."