Totemism in the Post-Shahnama Epics: Garshasp-Nama, Sam-Nama, Kush-Nama and Borzu Nama

Nature with its awesome powers was so overwhelming to humankind that he, by every look round, saw a shape of magic or mystique. First communities, for safer habitation, used to took their fears for sacred, henceforth initiated totemic beliefs in similar circumstances. In Totemist's mind, the plants and animals grown for food supply and a class of which was imagined to bear the soul of ancestors, this way guarding the tribe and saving the people, and to deserve special values. Therefore, the current paper aimed at exploring Totemism and its picture in the epics composed after Shahnama. Following the totemic beliefs in the epics, we found a variety of sacred animals such as cows, horses, and the Simurgh, along with the manifestation of worship of plants and trees, as well as some totemic plants with mythologies on human genesis from the plant and the healing attributes of herbs and trees; all of which pinpoint totemism featuring in ancient Persian beliefs and myths, thus explaining social taboos against killing and eating totemic things.