--- title: "The Persian MâR-Nâmeh Or, the Book for Taking Omens... description: An exploration of the Mâr-Nâmeh, a late 15th-century Zoroastrian text listing omens derived from snake sightings across the 30 days of the Zoroastrian... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-persian-m-r-n-meh-or-the-book-for-taking-omens-from-snakes-1892--ygtvwtsjv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: "The Persian MâR-Nâmeh Or, the Book for Taking Omens from Snakes" (1892) | daily.dev og:description: An exploration of the Mâr-Nâmeh, a late 15th-century Zoroastrian text listing omens derived from snake sightings across the 30 days of the Zoroastrian... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-persian-m-r-n-meh-or-the-book-for-taking-omens-from-snakes-1892--ygtvwtsjv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/YGtvwtSjV.png og:image:alt: "The Persian MâR-Nâmeh Or, the Book for Taking Omens from Snakes" (1892) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # "The Persian MâR-Nâmeh Or, the Book for Taking Omens from Snakes" (1892) **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary An exploration of the Mâr-Nâmeh, a late 15th-century Zoroastrian text listing omens derived from snake sightings across the 30 days of the Zoroastrian calendar. The text is part of the Revayat of Darab Hormozdyar and was translated into English in 1892 by a surgeon presenting to the Bombay Anthropological Society. Despite snakes being classified as khrafstar — evil creatures of Ahriman — the Mâr-Nâmeh contains surprisingly auspicious omens, which scholars suggest may reflect pre-Zoroastrian or Egyptian influences. The piece contextualizes the text within Zoroastrian cosmology, Iranian literary tradition, and the broader practice of divination in Iranian culture. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 13 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-09-13). **TL;DR:** Commenters are largely enthusiastic, using the post as a springboard to celebrate Persian/Iranian culture through film and game recommendations, with a fun linguistic aside connecting 'khrafstar' to software bugs. **Sentiment:** 70% positive · 20% mixed · 10% skeptical **The case for** - The post sparked genuine appreciation for Persian cultural heritage and prompted rich recommendations for Iranian cinema and games. - The linguistic parallel between 'khrafstar' (evil creature) and software 'bugs' was noted as a clever and apt connection. - The Internet Archive was praised for preserving and making such obscure historical texts publicly accessible. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Discussion is warm and tangential — commenters enthusiastically share Iranian film and game recommendations rather than engaging deeply with the text itself, with a light scholarly aside on 'khrafstar' as a translation for software bugs. **Open questions** - Could the auspicious omens in the Mâr-Nâmeh be more concretely traced to pre-Zoroastrian or Egyptian influences? **Highlights** > > How, one should rightly ask, could a khrafstar like the snake possibly be associated with good fortune? For a while a running joke in Persian Wikipedia community was to call software "bugs", _khrafstar_s. > — [shervinafshar on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49237611) > The use of "bug" for engineering defect (a use that predates software by around a century) shares Middle English etymology with bugbear and bugaboo, both of which relate to evil spirits/creatures and annoyances. Khrafstar is not unreasonable as a translation. > — [sfRattan on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238820) > Just another reminder of the absolutely massive public benefit that the Internet Archive represents. Just wish they'd make the metadata crowd-sourced, maybe a tie-up with Wikidata. > — [georgefrowny on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49240776) > Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a very solid metroidvania that nails the cultural aspect. There's even a well produced farsi dub! > — [PetitPrince on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49240477) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49205793) · 64 points · 13 comments ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@springtofigh** · 0 upvotes > Wow! It was very unexpected to see a historical book about snakes from my country in HN😉👌 ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge](https://daily.dev/posts/artificial-intelligence-ars-notoria-and-the-promise-of-instant-knowledge-fphgptf5y) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Schneier on Security](https://daily.dev/posts/schneier-on-security-al9fxg2pc) · Schneier on Security · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Codeless Code: Case 234 Ozymandias](https://daily.dev/posts/the-codeless-code-case-234-ozymandias-7mt8hmcql) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Confront Indian Demons in RPG Inspired by Vampire: The Masquerade](https://daily.dev/posts/confront-indian-demons-in-rpg-inspired-by-vampire-the-masquerade-id1chwpcu) · 80 LEVEL · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Lazarus Group Picks a New Poison: Medusa Ransomware](https://daily.dev/posts/lazarus-group-picks-a-new-poison-medusa-ransomware-plk9atyu6) · Dark Reading · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-persian-m-r-n-meh-or-the-book-for-taking-omens-from-snakes-1892--ygtvwtsjv) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"\"The Persian MâR-Nâmeh Or, the Book for Taking Omens from Snakes\" (1892)","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-persian-m-r-n-meh-or-the-book-for-taking-omens-from-snakes-1892--ygtvwtsjv","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-persian-m-r-n-meh-or-the-book-for-taking-omens-from-snakes-1892--ygtvwtsjv"},"datePublished":"2026-08-10T04:36:00.523Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T21:09:00.512Z","description":"An exploration of the Mâr-Nâmeh, a late 15th-century Zoroastrian text listing omens derived from snake sightings across the 30 days of the Zoroastrian...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/71e9c234db3f5d2be0e9ca3085f368f0?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/71e9c234db3f5d2be0e9ca3085f368f0?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-persian-m-r-n-meh-or-the-book-for-taking-omens-from-snakes-1892--ygtvwtsjv","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"\"The Persian MâR-Nâmeh Or, the Book for Taking Omens from Snakes\" (1892)"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-persian-m-r-n-meh-or-the-book-for-taking-omens-from-snakes-1892--ygtvwtsjv","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"Wow! It was very unexpected to see a historical book about snakes from my country in HN😉👌","datePublished":"2026-08-10T11:29:58.946Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/YGtvwtSjV#c-wYMyQrelW","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Spring Tofigh","url":"https://daily.dev/springtofigh","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/90114320?v=4"}}]} ```