Sraosha (Avestan: sraosha, 'hearkening' or 'attentive listening') is the yazata of disciplined receptivity to the divine word, celebrated in the Srosh Yasht (Yasht 11) as the first being to chant the Gathas and the first to girdle himself with the sacred kusti. He guards the world during the dangerous hours of night when the demons of Aeshma (Wrath) are strongest, and for three nights after death he protects the departing soul (urvan) before escorting it to the Chinvat Bridge where he serves as one of the three judges alongside Mithra and Rashnu. Sraosha's name encodes his function: he is the faculty of sacred listening through which Ahura Mazda's manthra (holy words) are received, and the Yasna liturgy invokes him as the embodiment of prayer properly performed — the precise, attentive recitation that sustains Asha in the getig world.