Zend Avesta Part 01

SR No.: 007671
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1895
Total Pages: 2695
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 161

66
VENDIDAD.
coverings and for their sheets !, until they can withdraw their hands for prayer?
60 (168). "Ahura Mazda, indeed, does not allow us to waste anything of value that we may have, not even so much as an Asperena's : weight of thread, not even so much as a maid lets fall in spinning.
61 (171). Whosoever throws any clothing on a dead body, even so much as a maid lets fall in spinning, is not a pious man whilst alive, nor shall he, when dead, have a place in Paradise.
62 (174). He makes himself a viaticum unto the world of the wicked, into that world, made of
1 The clothing defiled by the dead can only serve for Dashtân women, even after it has been washed and exposed for six months to the light of the sun and of the moon (Saddar 91; cf. Farg. VII, 10 seq.)
Until they are clean. The unclean must have their hands wrapped in an old piece of linen, lest they should touch and defile anything clean.
3 See Farg. IV, 48, note 4.
• Cf. Farg. VIII, 23 seq. It appears from those passages that the dead must lie on the mountain naked, or clothed only with the light of heaven' (Farg. VI, 51). The modern custom is to clothe them with old clothing (Dadabhai Naoroji, Manners and Customs of the Parsis, p. 15). When a man dies and receives the order (to depart), the older the shroud they make for him, the better. It must be old, worn out, but well washed: they must not lay anything new on the dead. For it is said in the Zend Vendidad, If they put on the dead even so much as a thread from the distaff more than is necessary, every thread shall become in the other world a black snake clinging to the heart of him who made that shroud, and even the dead shall rise against him and seize him by the skirt, and say, That shroud which thou madest for me has become food for worms and vermin' (Saddar 12). After the fourth day, when the soul is in heaven, then rich garments are offered up to it, which it will wear in its celestial life (Saddar 87).
o Where darkness can be seized with the hand' (Comm.; cf. Aogemaidê 28); something more than the visible darkness.'
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