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232
YASNA IX.
H(a)oma, the holy and driving death afar; pray to me, O Spitâma, prepare me for the taste. Praise toward me in (Thy) praises as the other [Saoshyants] praise.
3. Thereupon spake Zarathustra: Unto H(a)oma be the praise? What man, O H(a)oma! first prepared thee for the corporeal world? What blessedness was offered him ? what gain did he acquire ?
4. Thereupon did H(a)oma answer me, he the holy one, and driving death afar : Vivanghvant * was the first of men who prepared me for the incarnate world. This blessedness was offered him ; this gain did he acquire, that to him was born a son who was Yima, called the brilliant, (he of the many flocks, the most glorious of those yet born, the sunlike-one of men ), that he made from his authority both herds and people free from dying, both plants and waters free from drought, and men could eat imperishable food.
5. In the reign of Yima swift of motion was there neither cold nor heat, there was neither age nor death, nor envy * demon-made. Like fifteen-yearlings 6 walked the two forth, son and father, in their stature and their form, so long as Yima, son of Vivanghvant ruled, he of the many herds!
6. Who was the second man, O H(a)oma! who
1 Might not the entire sixteenth verse be placed here?
The fifth from Gaya Maretan the Iranian Adam, but his counterpart, the Indian Vivasvat, appears not only as the father of Yama, but of Manu, and even of the gods, (as promoted mortals ?).
& Compare svar-drisas pávamânâs. • So the Pahlavi.
• Males, like females, seem to have been considered as developed at fifteen years of age.
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