Sacred Laws of Aryas

SR No.: 007687
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Gorge Buhler
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1897
Total Pages: 1979
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 36 MB

Page 469

INTRODUCTION, X.
1xxiji
The Drug is expelled from the living, whom she has seized through their contact with the dead, by a process of washings with ox's urine (gồmêz or nirang) and with water, combined with the Sag-dîd ?.
The real import of these ceremonies is shown by the spells which accompany their performance: Perish, O fiendish Drug! Perish, O brood of the fiend ! Perish, O world of the fiend ! Perish away, O Drug! Rush away, O Drug! Perish away, O Drug! Perish away to the regions of the north, never more to give unto death the living world of the holy spirit!'
Thus, in the death of a man, there is more involved than the death of one man: the power of death, called forth from hell, threatens from the corpse, as from a stronghold, the whole world of the living, ready to seize whatever may fall within his reach, and from the dead defiles the living, and from the living rushes upon the living. When a man dies in a house, there is danger for three days lest somebody else should die in that house 2.
The notion or feeling, out of which these ceremonies grew, was far from unknown to the other Indo-European peoples : what was peculiar to Mazdeism was that it carried it to an extreme, and preserved a clearer sense of it, while elsewhere it grew dimmer and dimmer, and faded away. In fact, when the Greek, going out of a house where a dead man lay, sprinkled himself with water from the apodvlov at the door, it was death that he drove away from himself. The Vedic Indian, too, although his rites were intended chiefly for the benefit of the dead, considered himself in danger and, while burning the corpse, cried aloud : ‘Away, go away, O Death! injure not our sons and our men !' (Rigveda X, 18, 1.)
$ 4. As to the rites by means of which the Drug is expelled, they are the performance of myths. There is nothing in worship but what existed before in mythology. What we call a practice is only an imitation of gods, an ομοίωσις θεώ, as man fancies he can bring about the things
Farg. VIII, 35-72; IX, 13–36.
. Saddar 78.
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