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Pahlavi Texts, Part IV (SBE37), E.W. West, tr. [1892], at sacred-texts.com


CHAPTER XIV.

dkar Nask.

1. The thirteenth fargard, Tad-thwâ-peresâ 3,

p. 197

is about the strength and mightiness of the spirit of the sacred cake 1. 2. This, too, that every night the demons rush from hell 2 into the world, to injure and cause the death of the creatures; and, when people consecrate a sacred cake, that spirit descends to attack and keep back the demons, and to engage in combat with the demons ninety-nine times during every night; he also smites and stupefies them, and keeps them back from destroying the world.

3. This, too, that any one whatever of those men who utter these words 3 in prayer becomes righteous, except those men who shall contentedly, or wishfully, carry out a command for evil deeds, and they deceive (suftênd), or make others deceive, by statements proposed to them; and whose evil thoughts are thus more than their good thoughts, their evil words more than their good words, and their evil deeds more than their good deeds. 4. About carrying off the reliance produceable that a sin worthy of death is the obliteration (frâz mûshtanŏ) of other sin, like an awful and mighty wind when it sweeps swiftly over the plain 4.

5. Of righteousness the excellence is perfect.


Footnotes

196:3 The first three words of the second hâ of the second Gâtha (Yas. XLIV, 1), here written tad-spâ-pêres in Pahlavi.

197:1 See Bk. VIII, Chap. XXIX, 2.

197:2 K omits 'from hell,' and B omits 'night.'

197:3 Meaning probably Yas. XLIV.

197:4 A favorite metaphor derived from the Avesta text (see Pahl. Vend. III, 149; Mkh. LII, 19).


Next: Chapter XV