Khara

 


To end off the one year anniversary month I'm featuring one of the strangest beast I've ever found in mythology, the khara. Also known as the three legged ass, it's a unicorn found in Zoroastrian mythology, which is like no other. Khara means donkey in Sanskrit, it's name in Persian is xar-i-se-pay. It's one of the oldest written accounts of a unicorn like creature and likely influenced every other unicorn from Europe and western Asia. The idea of unicorns purifying water with their horn certainly originated with the khara.

The overall appearance is like a donkey, and the khara was said to be a divine donkey. It was as tall as a mountain. It had three legs that were like tree trunks. The khara had six eyes, two in the normal location, two on top the head, and two on the shoulders. With this arrangement of eyes the khara could see in all directions at once and no threat could sneak up on it. The strangest aspect of the khara is that it is covered in extra mouths. Although the word used for mouths in this case could also translate to testicles, and that is almost certainly how it should be translated in this case considering the khara's connection to fertility. Finally, the horn was made of gold and hollow like a trumpet. Thousands more horns grew from the central horn. Some of these horns were the size of bulls, not bull horns but the entire bull.

The khara was the sacred beast of Tistar or Tishtrya, the god of rain and storms, who is identified with the star Sirius. It stands in the middle of the sacred ocean of Vourukasha, which supplies water to all other seas of the world. There the khara stand guards over the water supplies of the world and purifies them from the effects of evil. It is said that if the khara didn't do this then the seas would be overtaken by evil and all life in them would perish.

The khara goes about purifying the waters by various bodily functions. When it splashes in the ocean the water splashed up reaches into the clouds and is collected by Tistar to become rain. When the khara brays all the nymphs, mermaids and other good beings of the ocean become pregnant and all the evil beings of the ocean miscarry. When the khara urinates the waters of the ocean are purified. The khara's food is spiritual so it doesn't need to eat, yet it still defecates and this feces is ambergris. The khara was considered so pure and holy that even these usually dirty bodily functions helped purify the world.  


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