dona, Pilumnus, and Deverra, keep her threshold, lest Sylvanus come in ami harm her (Augustinus, De Civ. D. VI, 9).
XC1V vend!dAd.
appears from the last Fargard that all or, at least, many diseases might be cured by spells and Barashnfim washing. It appears from Herodotus and Agathias that contagious diseases required the same treatment as uncleanness: thef sick man was excluded from the community of the faithful 1, until cured and cleansed according to the rites2.
§ 15. The unclean are confined in a particular place, apart from all clean persons and objects, the Armfot-g&h 3, which may be described, therefore, as the Dakhma for the living. All the unclean, all those struck with temporary death, the man who has touched dead matter, the woman in her menses, or just delivered of child, the leper4, or the man who has made himself unclean for ever by carrying a corpse alone5, stay there all the time of their un- cleanness.
§ 16. Thus far for general principles. From the diversity of circumstances arises a system of casuistry, the develop- ment of which may be followed first through the glosses to the Vendidad, in which the labours of several generations of theologians are embodied, and, later on, through the Ravdcts. We will give a few instances of it, as found in the Vendidad itself.
The process of the cleansing varies according to the degree of unclcanncss; and, again, the degree of unclean- ness depends on the state of the thing that defiles and the nature of the thing that is defiled.
The uncleanness from the dead is the worst of all, and it is at its utmost when contracted before the Nasu has been expelled from the corpse by the Sag-did 6: it can be cured only by means of the most complicated system of cleansing, the nine nights’ Barashnftm 7.
8 The Armc.st-gah for women in their menses is called Dashtanistan.
7 Fwg. IX. The Barashnum, originally meant to remove the uncleanness from the dead, became a general instrument of holiness. Children when putting on the Kosli (Farg. XVIII, 9, n. 4) perform it to be cleansed from the natural uncleanness they have contracted in the womb of their mothers. It is good for every one to perform it once a year.
INTRODUCTION, V.
XCV If the Nasu has already been expelled from the corpse, as the defiling power was less, a simple washing once made, the Ghosel, is enough1.
The defiling power of the Nasu reaches farther, if the death has just taken place, and if the dying creature occu- pied a higher rank in the scale of beings 2 *; for the more recent the victory of the demon, or the higher the being he has overcome, the stronger he must have been himself.
Mcnstruous women are cleansed by the Ghosel As for things they are more or less deeply defiled ac- cording to their degree of penetrability: metal vessels can be cleansed, earthen vessels cannot 4; leather is more easily cleansed than woven cloth5; dry wood than soft wood0. Wet matter is a better conductor of uncleanness than dry matter, and corpses cease to defile after a year7.
B.
§ 17. In the cases heretofore reviewed, only religious purposes are concerned. There is another order of laws, in which, although religion interferes, yet it is not at the root; namely, the laws about contracts and assaults, to which the fourth Fargard is devoted, and which are the only remains extant of the civil and penal legislation of Zoroastrianism.
The contracts were divided into two classes, according to their mode of being entered into, and according to the value of their object 8. As to their mode they arc word- contracts or hand-contracts: as to their object, they are sheep-contracts, ox-contracts, man-contracts, or field-con- tracts, which being estimated in money value are contracts to the amount of 3, 12, 500 istirs, and upwards9.
No contract can be made void by the will of one party * Farg. VII, 73 seq.
1 Farg. VIII, 36.
5 Farg. VII, 14 seq. 6 Farg. VII, 28 seq.
9 An i stir (<rrarfy) is as much as four dirhems estimated by modem tradition a little more than a rupee.
The dirhem is XCV1 vend$dAd.
alone; he who breaks a contract is obliged to pay the value of the contract next higher in value.
The family and the next of kin are, it would seem, answerable for the fulfilment of a contract, a principle of the old Indo-European civil law1.
§ 18. Assaults are of seven degrees: dgerepta, avaoirLyta2, stroke, sore wound, bloody wound, broken bone, and man- slaughter. The gravity of the guilt docs not depend on the gravity of the deed only, but also on its frequency. Each of these seven crimes amounts, by its being repeated with- out having been atoned for, to the crime that immediately follows in the scale, so that an agerepta seven times repeated amounts to manslaughter.
C.
§ 19. Every crime makes the guilty man liable to two penalties, one here below, and another in the next world.
The penalty here below consists of a certain number of stripes with the Aspahe-a^tra or the Sraosh6-£arana3.
The unit for heavy penalties is two hundred stripes; the crime and the criminal thus punished are called Pcshd-tanu orTanu-pcrctha(Parsi: Tanafuhr). The two words literally mean, ‘ one who pays with his own body/ and ‘ payment with one’s body/ and seem to have originally amounted to 1 Farg. IV, 5 scq. 3 Two different sorts of menaces; see IV, 54.
3 The general formula is literally, 4 Let (the priest; probably, the Sraosha- varez') strike so many strokes with the Aspahe-astra, so many strokes with the Sraosho-Xarana.* A.stra moans in Sanskrit ‘ a goad,’ so that Aspahe-astra may mean ‘ a horse-goad; * but Aspendiarji translates it by durra, ‘ a thong,’ which suits the sense better, and agrees with etymology too (' an instrument to drive a horse, a whip;’ astra, from the root az, ‘to drive;’ it is the Aspahe-astra which is referred to by Sozomenos II, 13: ifx6.<Jtv w^iots avrtiv k&aaaviaav 0 i fiayoi (the SraosM-varez), (Sia$6n<voi irpo<Tfcwr}<xai rtiv 77X101/). Sraosho- fcarana is translated by Hbuk, ‘ a whip,* which agrees with the Sanskrit trans- lation of the si-srdsh^aranam sin, ‘yat tribhir goJarmasataghatfiis prayas- Aityam bhavati t&vanmatram, a sin to be punished with three strokes with a whip.* It seems to follow that Aspahe-astra and Sraosho-larana are one and the same instrument, designated with two names, first in reference to its shape, and then to its use (Sraosho-^arana meaning * the instrument for penalty,’ or 4 the instrument of the Sraosh£-varez? ’). The Aspahe-astra is once called astra m airy a, 4 the astra for the account to be given,’ that is, 4 for the payment of the penalty’ (Farg. XVIII, 4).
INTRODUCTION, V.
XCVI1 ‘worthy of death, worthiness of death;* and in effect the word Pesho-tanu is often interpreted in the Palilavi Com- mentary by margarzan, ‘worthy of death.* But, on the whole, it was attached to the technical meaning of i one who has to receive two hundred strokes with the horse-whip1.* The lowest penalty in the Vendid&d is five stripes, and the degrees from five stripes to Peshdtanu are ten, fifteen, thirty, fifty, seventy, ninety, two hundred. For instance, agerepta is punished with five stripes, avaoiruta with ten, stroke with fifteen, sore wound with thirty, bloody wound with fifty, broken bone with seventy, manslaughter with ninety; a second manslaughter, committed without the former being atoned for, is punished with the Peshotanu penalty. In the same way the six other crimes, repeated eight, or seven, or six, or five, or four, or three times make the committer go through the whole scries of penalties up to tlje Peshotanu penalty.
§ 20. If one reviews the different crimes described in the Vcndidad, and the respective penalties prescribed for them, one cannot but wonder at first sight at the strange inequality between crime and penalty. Bcccaria would have felt un- comfortable while reading the Vcndidad. It is safer to kill a man than to serve bad food to a shepherd’s dog, for the manslaycr gets off with ninety stripes, whereas the bad master is at once a Pesh6tanu 2, and will receive two hun- dred stripes. Two hundred stripes are awarded if one tills land in which a corpse has been buried within the year3, if a woman just delivered of child drinks water4, if one suppresses the menses of a woman5 *, if one performs a sacrifice in a house where a man has just died0, if one neglects fastening the corpse of a dead man so that birds or dogs may not take dead matter to trees and rivers7. Two hundred stripes if one throws on the ground a bone of a man’s corpse, of a dog’s carcase as big as two ribs, four a Farg. IV, 40, and XIII, 24.
4 Farg. VII, 70 seq.
■W g * Farg. XVI, 13 seq. 7 Farg. VI, 47 seq.
XCViii VENDIDAD.
hundred if one throws a bone as big as a breast bone, six hundred if one throws a skull, one thousand if the whole corpse1. Four hundred stripes if one, being in a state of unclcanness, touches water or trees2, four hundred if one covers with cloth a dead man’s feet, six hundred if one covers his legs, eight hundred if the whole body3. Five hundred stripes for killing a whelp, six hundred for killing a stray dog, seven hundred for a house dog, eight hundred for a shepherd’s dog4 *, one thousand stripes for killing a VanhApara dog, ten thousand stripes for killing a water dog fi.
Capital punishment is expressly pronounced only against the false cleanser6 and the ‘carrier alone7/ Yet any one who bethinks himself of the spirit of the old Aryan legislation will easily conceive that there may be in its eyes many crimes more heinous, and to be punished more severely, than manslaughter: offences against man injure only one man; offences against gods endanger all mankind. No one should wonder at the unqualified cleanser being put to death who reads Demosthenes’ Ncaera; the Persians who defiled the ground by burying a corpse were not more severely punished than the Greeks were for de- filing with corpses the holy ground of Delos 8, or than the conquerors at Arginousac; nor would the Athenians, who put to death Atarbes have much stared at the awful revenge taken for the murder of the sacred dog. There is hardly any prescription in the Vend id Ad, however odd and absurd it may seem, but has its counterpart or its explana- tion in other Aryan legislations: if we had a Latin or a Greek Vendidad, I doubt whether it would look more rational.
§ 21. Yet, if theoretically the very absurdity of its prin- ciples is nothing peculiar to the Mazdean law, nay, is a proof of its authenticity, it may be doubted whether it could 1 Farg. VI, io seq. 2 Farg. VIII, 104 seq.
3 Farg. VIII, 23 seq. 4 Farg. XIII, 8 seq.
Farg. XIV, 1 seq. 0 Farg. IX, 47 seq.
7 Farg. Ill, 14 seq. Yet there were other capital crimes. See below, § 23.
• Diodor. XII, 58. 9 Aelianus, Hist. Var. V, 17.
INTRODUCTION, V.
XC1X ever have been actually applied in the form stated in the texts. It may be doubted whether the murder of a shepherd’s dog could have been actually punished with eight hundred stripes, much more whether the murder of a water dog could have been really punished with ten thousand stripes, unless we suppose that human endurance was different in ancient Persia from what it is elsewhere, or even in modern Persia herself1. Now as we sec that in modern tradition bodily punishment is estimated in money value, that is to say, converted iiito fines, a conversion which is alluded to in the Pahlavi translation 2, it may readily be admitted that as early as the time of the last edition of the Vendidad, that conversion had already been made. In the Ravaets, two hundred stripes, or a Tanafuhr, arc estimated as equal to three hundred istirs or twelve hundred dirhems, or thirteen hundred and fifty rupees; a stripe is therefore about equal to six rupees:i. How far that system prevailed in practice, whether the guilty might take advantage of this commuta- tion of his own accord, or only with the assent of the judge, we cannot decide. It is very likely that the riches of the fire-temples came for the most part from that source, and that the sound of the dirhems often made the Sraosho- /v’arana fall from the hands of the Mobcds. That the system of financial penalties did not, however, suppress the system of bodily penalties, appears from the customs of the Parsis who apply both, and from the Pahlavi Commentary which expressly distinguishes three sorts of atonement: the atone- ment by money (khvastak), the atonement by the Sra- osho-^arana, and the atonement by cleansing.
§ 23. This third element of atonement is strictly religious. It consists in repentance, which is manifested by avowal of the guilt and by the recital of a formula of repentance, 1 In the time of Chardin, the number of stripes inflicted on the guilty never exceeded three hundred; in the old German law, two hundred; in the Hebrew law, forty.
2 Ad Farg. XIV, 2.
3 In later Parstism every sin (and every good deed) has its value in money fixed, and may thus be weighed in the scales of Rashnu. If the number of sin dirhems outweigh the number of the good deed dirhems, the soul is saved. Herodotus noticed the same principle of compensation in the Persian law of VENDfDAD.
the. Patet. The performance of the Patet has only a religious effect: it saves the sinner from penalties in the other world, but not from those here below: it delivers him before God, but not before man. When the sacrilegious cleanser has repented his sin, he is not the less flayed and beheaded, but his soul is saved l. Yet, although it has no efficacy in causing the sin to be remitted, the absence of it has power to cause it to be aggravated 2 *.
§ 23. Thus far for sins that can be atoned for. There are some that arc an&peretha, ‘inexpiable/ which means, as it seems, that they arc punished with death here below, and with torments in the other world.
Amongst the anfiperctlia sins arc named the burning of the dead, the burying of the dead a, the eating dead matter 4, unnatural sin r\ and self-pollution °. Although it is not expressly declared that these sins were punished with death, yet we know it of several of them, cither from Greek accounts or from Parsi tradition. There arc also whole classes of sinners whose life, it would seem, can be taken by any one who detects them in the act, such as the courtezan, the highwayman, the Sodomite, and the corpse- burner7.
§ 24. Such are the most important principles of the Maz- dcan law that can be gathered from the Vcndidad. These details, incomplete as they are, may give us an idea, if not of the Sassanian practice, at least of the Sassanian ideal. That it was an ideal which intended to pass into practice, we know from the religious wars against Armenia, and from the fact that very often the superintendence of jus- tice and the highest offices of the state were committed to Mobeds.
We must now add a few words on the plan of the fol- lowing translation. As to our method we beg to refer to the second chapter above. It rests on the Parsi tradition, corrected or confirmed by the comparative method. The 7 Seep, in, n. 1; Farg. XVIII, 64.
INTRODUCTION, V.
Cl Parsi tradition is found in the Pahlavi Commentary \ the understanding of which was facilitated to us first by the Gujarathi translation and paraphrase of Aspendiarji1 2, and by a Persian transliteration and translation belonging to the Haug collection in Munich 3, for the use of which we were indebted to the obliging kindness of the Director of the State Library in Munich, Professor von Halm. The Ravaets and the Saddar4 frequently gave us valuable information as to the traditional meaning of doubtful pas- sages. As for the works of European scholars, we arc much indebted to the Commentary on the Avcsta by Pro- fessor Spiegel, and to the translations in the second edition of Martin Ilaug’s Essays.
We have followed the text of the Avcsta as given by Westergaard; the division into paragraphs is according to Westergaard; but we have given in brackets the corre- sponding divisions of Professor Spiegel’s edition.
Many passages in the Vcndidad Sadah are mere quota- tions from the Pahlavi Commentary which have crept into the Sadah text: we have not admitted them into the text. They are generally known to be spurious from their not being translated in the Commentary5: yet the absence of a Pahlavi translation is not always an unmistakable sign of such spuriousness. Sometimes the translation has been lost in our manuscripts, or omitted as having already been given in identical or nearly identical terms. When we thought 1 Our quotations refer to the text given in Spiegel’s edition, but corrected after the London manuscript.
3 Unfortunately the copy is incomplete: there are two lacunae, one from I, 11 to the end of the chapter; the other, more extensive, from VI, 26 to IX. The perfect accordance of Ter si an translation with the Gujarathi of Aspendiarji shows that both arc derived from one and the same source. Their accordance is striking even in mistakes; for instance, the Pahlavi avastar a transliteration of the Zend a-vaslra, ‘without pastures’ (VII, 28), is misread by the Persian translator Avastar, ‘ he who wishes,* owing to the ambiguity of the Pahlavi letter /*> (av or hv ), and it is translated by Aspendiaiji.Kahdn&r, ‘ the wisher.* 4 The prose Saddar (as found in the Great Ravaet), which differs considerably from the Saddar in verse, as translated by Hyde.
8 Without speaking of their not being connected with the context. See Farg. I, 4, 15, 20; II, 6, 20; V, 1; VII, 53“54- cu VENDiDAD.
that this was the case, we have admitted the untranslated passages into the text, but in brackets \ We have divided the principal Fargards into several sections according to the matter they contain: this divi- sion, which is meant as an attempt to resolve the Vcndidad into its primitive fragments, has, of course, no traditional authority, the divisions into paragraphs being the only ones that rest upon the authority of the manuscripts.
The translation will be found, in many passages, to differ greatly from the translations published heretofore1 2. The nature of this series of translations did not allow us to give full justificatory notes, but we have endeavoured in most cases to make the explanatory notes account to scholars for the new meanings we have adopted, and, in some cases, we hope that the original text, read anew, will by itself justify our translation3.
We must not conclude this introduction without ten- dering our warmest thanks to Mr. E. W. West, who kindly revised the MS. of the translation before it went to press, and who has, we hope, succeeded in making our often imperfect English more acceptable to English readers.
JAMES DARMESTETER.
Paris, November, 1879.
1 Farg. VIT, 3; VI IT, 95. Formulae and enumerations arc often left untrans- lated, although they must he considered part of the text (VII T, 72; XI, 9, 12; - Complete translations of thcVendidad have been published by Anquctil Duperron in France (Paris, 1771), by Professor Spiegel in Germany (Leipzig, 1S52), by Canon de Ilarlez in Belgium (Louvain, 1877). The translation of Professor Spiegel was translated into English by ^Professor Blecck, who added useful information from inedited Gujarathi translations (Hertford. 1864).
3 The following is a list of the principal abbreviations used in this volume: — Asp. = Aspendiarji’s translation.
Bund.-Bundahis; Arabic numbers refer to the chapter (according to Justi’s edition); Roman numbers refer to the page and line.
Comm. » The Pahlavi Commentary.
Gr. Rav.*=Le Grand Ravaet (in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, Supple- ment Persnn, No. 47).
Orm. Ahr. = Ormazd et Ahriman, Paris, Vieweg, 1877.
vendIdAd.
vend! dAd.
Fargarp I.
This chapter is an enumeration of sixteen lands created by Ahura Mazda, and of as many plagues created in opposition by Angra Mainyu.
Many attempts have been made, not only to identify these six- teen lands, but also to draw historical conclusions from their order of succession, as representing the actual order of the migrations and settlements of the old Iranian tribes \ But there is nothing in the text that would authorise us to look to it even for legendary records, much less for real history. We have here nothing more than a geographical description of Iran, such as might be expected in a religious work like the Vendidad, that is to say, one that contains mythical lands as well as real countries. It is not easy to decide with perfect certainty, in every case, whether we have to do with a land of the former or of the latter kind, owing partly to our deficient knowledge of the geography of ancient Iran, partly to the fact that names, originally belonging to mythical lands, are often in later times attached to real ones.
Of these sixteen lands there are certainly nine which have really existed, and of which we know the geographical position, as we are able to follow their names from the records of the Achaemenian kings or the works of classical writers down to the map of modern Iran. They are the following: — 1 Rhode, Die heilige Sage des Zendvolks, p. 61; Ileeren, Idcen zur Geschichte, I, p. 498; Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde I, p. 526; Haug in Bunsen's work, Aegypten’s Stellung, V, 2nd part, p. 104; Kiepert, Monatsberichte der Berliner Akadcmic, 1856, p. 621.— New light was thrown on this record by M. Br£al in his paper ‘De la gdographie de fAvcsta' (in the Melanges de mytho- logie et de linguistique, p. 187 seq.)
2 vendIdAd.
ZEND NAME.
OLD PERSIAN.
GREEK.
MODERN NAME.
Sughdha (2) Suguda Soyfkavrj (Samarkand) Mfluru(3) Margu M apyiavr) Merv Bakhdhi(4) Bakhtri JlaKTpa Balkh Ilaroyu (6) Haraiva VA pcia Hari-rfid Vchrkana (9) Varkdna 'YpKtxvia Gorg&n Iiarahvaiti (10) Harauvati *A pd\(OTOf Ilarftt IIaetuma//t(n) 'l&TvpavBpos Helmend Ragha (12) Raga *P ayat Rai Ilapta hi//du (15) IIi//davas ilvboi (Pait^ab) The real existence of Nisfiya (5) is certain, although its position cannot be exactly determined (see the note to § 8).
For the other lands we are confined for information to the Pahlavi Commentary. Aakhra( 1 3) is only transliterated, whether the name was then too much known to require any further explana- tion or too little to allow of any. Urva (8) is described as being Masan (‘the land of Masan’ or ‘the land of the Great’), a name which applied, in the Sassanian ages, to the land around Ispahan (Firdausi, ed. Mohl, V, 270).
For ‘ Varena, the fouf-cornered’ (14), the Commentary hesitates between the Padashkhvargar mountains (the Elborz) and Kirman, a hesitation easily accounted for by the fact that Varena is the seat of the struggle between AsLr Dahaka and Thraetaona, between the storm serpent and the storm god, and was formerly ‘the four- sided Heaven' (see Introd. IV, 12, 23). Modern tradition decides in favour of Padashkhvargar, probably because the serpent was at last bound to Dcmavand, the highest peak in that chain. The claims of Kirman were probably founded on the popular etymology of its name, ‘ the land of snakes.’
‘Vackereta, of the evil shadows’ (8), is identified with Kapul (Cabul); whether rightly or wrongly, we are unable to decide; yet, as it is spoken of only as the seat of the adventures of Kere- saspa (see Introd. IV, 21), it may be suspected that this assimilation rests merely on the fact that, in later tradition, the legend of Kere- saspa was localised in the table-land of Peshyans&i, in Kabulistan (Bund. XXX).
In the enumeration there is no apparent order whatever, and Ormazd, in his creations, seems to travel all over the map, forward and backward, without the slightest regard to the cardinal points. Yet, the starting point and the final point have not been arbitrarily chosen: the first land created was ‘the Airyana Vae&A by the Vanguhi Daitya,' and the last was the land by the Rangha. Now, FARGARD I.
3 the Vanguhi and the Rangha were originally the celestial rivers that came down from heaven (as two heavenly Gahgas) to surround the earth, the one in the east, the other in the west (Bund. XX); this is why the creation begins with a land by the Vanguhi and ends with a land by the Rangha.
In the Sassanian ages, when the Tigris was definitively the border of Iran in the west, the Rangha was identified with it, and the sixteenth land is accordingly described in the Commentary as being Arvastan-i-Rfim, or Roman Mesopotamia. But all the Avesta passages in which the Rangha is cited refer to its mythical nature, as the river in the far-off horizon, as the surrounding Okeanos, and, now and then, still resembling its Vcdic homonym, the Rasa, as the river that divides the gods from the fiends.
The first land, the Airyana Vae^o by the Vanguhi Daitya, remained to the last a mythical region. It was originally the abode of Yima and of the righteous, that is to say, a particular form of paradise (see Introd. IV, 38, and Farg. II). Later on, it was looked for in the countries north of Adarbaijan, probably in order that it should be as near as possible to the seat of the Zoroastrian religion, yet without losing its supernatural character by the counter-evidence of facts. This brought about the division of the Vanguhi Daitya into two rivers: as the Airyana Vae^o was localised in the country north of Adarbaijan, the river in it must become identified with the A raxes (Aras); but, at the same time, it continued to surround the world eastward under the name of Veh (Vanguhi), which was the Sassanian name of the Oxus — Indus 1. It seems that in the time of Herodotus, the Araxcs and the Oxus were considered one and the same river 2, as the Oxus and the Indus were later on; this would account for his strange statement that the Araxcs, which is con- fessedly with him the Oxus or Yaxartes, springs from the land of the Matianians, like the Cyndes, and flows eastwards (I, 202; IV, 40; cf. Ill, 36; IV, 1 1 ); and, at the same time, this would account both for how the Airyana Vae#6 could be localised in the basin of the Araxes and how the Oxus could flow eastwards to fall into the Arabian sea 3.
1 The Oxus and the Indus were believed to be one and the same river (Bund. 1. c.; sec Garrcz, Journal Asiatique, 1869, II, 195 seq.)
2 Running under the Caspian sea, as Arcthusa runs under the Sicilian sea and the Rangha itself under the Persian gulf (Bund. XX; cf. Garrez 1. c.)
3 Whether in the time when this Fargard was written, the Airyana 4 vendIdAd.
It follows hence that no historical conclusions can be drawn from this description: it was necessary that it should begin with the Vanguhi and end with the Rangha. To look to it for an account of geographical migrations, is converting cosmology into history.
Of the counter-creations of Angra Mainyu there is little to be said: they are different vices and plagues, which are generally unconnected with the country to the creation of which they answer. Some of them are expressed by &ra£ Xryo^wi, the meaning of which is doubtful or unknown.
If we assume that only lands belonging to the Iranian world were admitted into the list, the mention of the Seven Rivers would indicate that the first Fargard was not composed earlier than the time when the basin of the Indus became a part of Iran, that is, not earlier than the reign of Darius the First.
1. Ahura Mazda1 spake unto Spitama2 Zara- thiutra * saying: 2. I have made every land dear to its dwellers, even though it had no charms whatever in it 4: had I not made every land dear to its dwellers, even though it had no charms whatever in it, then the whole living world would have invaded the Airyana VaiVo \ 3 (5). The first of the good lands and countries Va&;6 was still believed to be in the far-off lands of the rising sun, or already on the banks of the Aras, we leave undecided.
1 See Introd. IV, 4.
2 Literally ‘the most beneficent/ an epithet of Zarathujtra, which was later mistaken for a family name, ‘ the Spitamide.’
3 See Introd. IV, 40.
4 ‘Every one fancies that the land where he is born and has been brought up is the best and fairest land that I have created.’ (Comm.)
6 Sec following clause. Clause 2 belongs to the Commentary; it is composed of quotations that illustrate the alternative process of the creation: ‘First, Ahura Mazda would create a land of such kind that its dwellers might like it, and there could be nothing more delightful. Then he who is all death would bring against it a counter-creation.’
FARGARD I.
5 which I, Ahura Mazda, created, was the Airyana Vaefo \ by the good river Daitya 2.