Chapter IV
Chapter IV
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Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV.

1. It 4 is both explained again and summarized thus:--If the decree be from a law of Zaratûst, is it so decreed as he spoke it? and if they should never perform by that, do not bring the Avesta and its exposition into the midst of it. 2. For the fifteen times of which you have written, if from the revelation of Zaratûst, are his mode of washing fifteen times upwards and fifteen times downwards 5, a rule

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which is fulfilled. 3. It is said, if one's defilement be owing to depositing any bodily refuse (higar-1), then nothing of this is ever necessary for him, for one reckoning (mar-1) 1 will smite that which he takes hold of with a finger and it is clean, or it will smite a golden yellow clean, or whatever 2 it shall smite is clean; but nothing merely clean is purified, unless a demon be clean 3.

4. And this, too, is very amazing to me, that when this is not taken into account by you, that when there should be, and one should obtain, no purifier 4 it would then be necessary for him to operate himself 5, how then is this knowledge obtained by you, on which information (âgahîh) has reached you, that the purifying of all the purifiers of the country of Irân is just as they should always perform it. 5. When, as I consider, there is then no complete acquaintance with the management of a house in you, its own master, in what manner then is our account of the gossip 6, and your information, about all the purifiers of the country of Irân

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obtained? 6. If your people should abandon that which is most indispensable, and your account of the gossip, as regards that which the whole realm has done, be not according to the commands of religion and to sound wisdom; and if it has not come completely to your knowledge as the washing of the purifiers of the country of Irân--because, when you do not fix the number even of their footsteps 1, it is certain that your understanding of their disposition and virtuous practice is even less--then it was necessary for you to determine the reason that all the purifiers in the country of Irân always wash that way that is declared as improper, with whatever certainty it be uttered or written.

Footnotes
  1. 341:4

    His own line of argument.

  2. 341:5

    See Chap. III, 2.

  3. 342:1

    That is, a single washing, which is sufficient for ordinary defilements unconnected with the dead.

  4. 342:2

    This is doubtful; the word seems to be kîkê in Pâzand, but, as the Av. î and û are much alike in Iranian MSS., it may be read kûk-ê, and the phrase would then be 'or it will smite a penis clean.'

  5. 342:3

    That is, cleanliness can no more be considered purification than a demon, who is supposed to be an embodiment of impurity, can be considered clean.

  6. 342:4

    J has 'when there should be no purifier it would be necessary to beg the help of a chief of the religion, and when one should not obtain that.'

  7. 342:5

    As directed in Vend. VIII, 299 (see App. V).

  8. 342:6

    Reading vak sakhûn, but this is uncertain.

  9. 343:1

    Referring probably either to the distance of the Bareshnûm place from pure objects, or to the distances between the holes or ablution seats, and from them to the furrows, mentioned in Vend. IX, 12, 24, 18, 22 (see App. IV).

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