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 586

BUNDAHIS.
and unrivalled " in splendour; the region of light is the place of Adharmazd, which they call 'endless light,' and the omniscience and goodness of the unrivalled Adharmazd is what they call 'revelation?.] 3. Revelation is the explanation of both spirits together; one is he who is independent of unlimited time $, because Adharmazd and the region, religion, and time of Adharmazd were and are and ever will be; while Aharman. in darkness, with backward understanding and desire for destruction, was in the abyss, and it is he who will not be; and the place of that destruction, and also of that darkness, is what they call the endlessly dark. 4. And between them was empty space, that is, what they call 'air,' in which is now their meeting.i
5. Both are limited and unlimited spirits, for the supreme is that which they call endless light, and the abyss that which is endlessly dark, so that between them is a void, and one is not connected with
1 Reading aham-kas, without a fellow-sovereign, peerless, unrivalled, independent.' This rare word occurs three times in $82, 3, and some Pâzand writers suggest the meaning' everlasting' (by means of the Persian gloss hamisah), which is plausible enough, but hâmakî would be an extraordinary mode of writing the very common word hamâî, ever.'
? The word dînô (properly deno), Av. daêna, being traceable to a root dî, 'to see,' must originally have meant 'a vision' (see Haug's Essays on the Religion of the Parsis, 2nd ed. p. 152, note 2), whence the term has been transferred to religion and all religious observances, rules, and writings; so it may be translated either by • religion' or by 'revelation.'
* This appears to be the meaning, but the construction of $ 3 is altogether rather obscure, and suggestive of omissions in the text.
• The usual name of the evil spirit; it is probably an older corruption of Angra-mainyu than Ganrak-maînôk, and a less technical term. Its Sasanian form was Aharmanî.
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