Sacred Texts  Zoroastrianism  Index  Previous  Next 
Buy this Book at Amazon.com

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


CHAPTER XXVIII.

1. One section of the first thirty of the Hûspâram 1 is the Aêrpatistân 2 ('priest-code'), particulars about a case where one has to provide for a priestly assembly (aêrpatistân), which is a birth; how the case is when it is important to go, how it is when one

p. 93

stays at his own house, and how it is when it is not allowable to go; also deciding about the chief priest (aêrpatŏ), and the proportion of priests (âsrûkŏ) who are superior, of those who are intermediate, and of those who are inferior in the estimation of the wisdom of the righteous. 2. About the priest whom one is sending, and the wayfaring garments and appliances which are to be given to him.

3. About the disciple, as reverent towards the chief priest; the labour in receiving the sacred words and teaching them to the disciple; the advice of the chief priest to the priests; and the muttered phrases at the time of contamination by dead matter. 4. About what priest—on the arrival of a priest back at the district from which one sends him—is to be appointed, as priest for the district from which he came, by the district governor and those of the district, for teaching and instruction in the district.

5. About which are those reckoned as the five dispositions 1 of a priest that are the glorification of the priest's statements of the law, from the first of his statements in succession unto the last, and whatever is on the same subject.

6. About the subjects regarding which a priest of concealed parentage is to be asked, with the prelude and sequel of the same subject. 7. About the bridge penalty 2 of a priest through sinfulness, in a separate fargard 3. 8. About a priest they may carry away from a district, owing to anxiety for forming a priestly assembly, who becomes worried in forming it.

p. 94

9. About the superiority of priests in means of knowledge, one as regards another; the extent of superiority through which the greater suitability for authority, of one as regards another 1, arises; and whatever is on the same subject.


Footnotes

92:1 Corresponding to the seventeenth word, â, in the Ahunavair, according to B. P. Riv.; and it is the seventeenth Nask in all Rivâyats. This name should probably be Avisp-kharam, meaning 'free from all defect;' but it is called Hûspârâm, Aspâram, or Aspâram in the Rivâyats, which also state that it contained sixty-four, or sixty, kardah or subdivisions. The former number agrees with the total of the sections mentioned in Chaps. XXVIII, XXXII, XXXVI.

92:2 A considerable portion of this section is still extant, combined with a larger portion of the next section, the Nîrangistân, whose name is applied to the whole text.

93:1 See Bd. XIX, 36 n.

93:2 See Chap. XX, 63.

93:3 See Chap. I, 20.

94:1 Reading sagâktarîh-î aêvakŏ min tanê pavan patîh, but there are only faint traces of the third, fourth, and fifth words, as the decayed folio of the manuscript has been patched, and the repairer forgot to record the missing words at the time he did his work. His marginal note refers to a defect in the next line of the manuscript.


Next: Chapter XXIX