Deity · Persian · c. 1000 BCE
Sraosha
Also called Srosh, Obedience · also recorded as Sraoša, Sorush, Sarosh, Saroš, Sroš (per Wikidata)
He guards the soul for three nights after death and stands directly opposed to Aeshma. It is an angel's job description, written before there were angels.
![Historical depiction of Sraosha, Persian deity — anonymous — Transferred from ru.wikipedia to Commons by Shakko using CommonsHelper. + [1]](/entities/sraosha.jpg)
Narrow source base
Defined by what he is set against. Zoroastrian cosmology matches each good power with an adversary, and his is Aeshma, the demon of wrath — so the god of hearing and obedience exists in the texts largely as what stands between a person and rage. He is the watchman who does not sleep, and the guardian of the soul through the three nights after death, which are the most dangerous in that tradition. The pattern is worth naming because this compendium meets it constantly afterwards: an angel assigned against a sin, a saint invoked against one affliction, a guardian defined by its opponent rather than by a domain. Iranian dualism is where the arrangement is most explicit, and this is its clearest single instance.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
No temple of his own. He is invoked in the Yasna and stands watch over the soul for three nights, which is liturgy rather than location.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Avesta · c. 1000-400 BCE
- Rank
- Yazata of Obedience
- Pantheon
- Persian
- Order
- Persian pantheon
- Base of operations
- No temple of his own. He is invoked in the Yasna and stands watch over the soul for three nights, which is liturgy rather than location.
- Era
- c. 1000 BCE
- Traditions
- Zoroastrian
- Placed in
- The Paired Orders
Traits
- Domain
- Obedience, prayer, the guarding of souls after death
- Traditional form
- Bearing a mace, with a cock as his herald
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to Sraosha, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- martial2
- social1
- transformation1
martial
social
transformation
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Sraosha, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 1,550 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Sraosha, Srosh
Protects the soul for three nights after death; the specific opponent of Aeshma, the demon of wrath.
The watchman who does not sleep, set against the demon of wrath and named as the protector of the soul in the nights after death. A guardian defined by an adversary rather than by a domain is the pattern this corpus meets again in every angel assigned against a sin.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Sraosha?
Is Sraosha the same as Michael?
What rank is Sraosha?
How else is Sraosha spelled?
What is Sraosha said to do?
How old is Sraosha?
Nearest in the corpus
If Sraosha is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Mithra
Lord of Covenant · Persian
God of the binding contract, worshipped from India to Roman Britain. No other deity in this compendium can be traced across three civilisations so cleanly.
Aeshma
Daeva of Wrath · Persian
The demon of wrath and of the bloody club. He also supplies the most defensible etymology for Asmodeus: *Aeshma-daeva* to *Ashmedai* to *Asmodeus*.
Ahura Mazda
The Wise Lord · Persian
The uncreated god of Zoroastrianism, opposed by Angra Mainyu — the pairing that probably gave Judaism and Christianity their two-sided cosmos.
Angra Mainyu
The Destructive Spirit · Persian
The hostile principle, with his own army of daevas — the first fully developed adversary in the record, and the likely structural template for Satan.
The Amesha Spentas
Six Great Emanations · Persian
Six emanations of Ahura Mazda, each paired against a specific demon — the earliest ranked, functionally-paired hierarchy of spirits anywhere.
Zahhak
The Serpent King · Persian
The three-headed serpent of the Avesta, who becomes in the Shahnameh a tyrant with snakes on his shoulders fed on human brains, chained beneath a mountain until the end.
The books behind Sraosha
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Avesta
Attributed to Zarathustra and later priests · c. 1000-400 BCE · Avestan
Read The Avesta in full ↗Cover: CC0 · Daderot · Wikimedia file page
Bundahishn
Anonymous Zoroastrian; tr. E. W. West · 9th c. CE, from older material · Middle Persian
Read Bundahishn in full ↗Cover: CC BY-SA 3.0 · The original uploader was Ploxhoi at English Wikipedia · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.