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rush together; whereon troops of Daêvas come rushing along; whereon they rush together to kill their fifties and their hundreds, their hundreds and their thousands, their thousands and their tens of thousands, their tens of thousands and their myriads of myriads.
VENDÎDÂD.
57 (140). On those Dakhmas, O Spitama Zarathustra! those Daêvas take food and void filth. As you, men, in the material world, you cook meal and eat cooked meat, so do they. It is, as it were, the smell of their feeding that you smell there, O men!
58 (143). For thus they go on revelling, until that stench is rooted in the Dakhmas. In those Dakhmas arise the infection of diseases, itch, hot fever, naêza 1, cold fever, rickets, and hair untimely white 2. On those Dakhmas meet the worst murderers, from the hour when the sun is down 3.
59 (148). And people of small understanding who do not seek for better understanding, the Gainis make those diseases grow stronger by a third, on their thighs, on their hands, on their three-plaited hair".'
6
1 Doubtful.
Albinism was regarded as sent by the demons. When Zâl was born with white hair, his father Sâm exposed on the Alborz 'that child of Dêv, with an old man's head' (Firdausi).
B
* Cemeteries are the meeting-place of robbers and murderers. Who do not seek for instruction.'
'The Gahi' (Comm.) The Gaini seems to be the Gahi as 'killing,' as bringing sickness.
• The general meaning of the sentence seems to be that, for want of hygiene, diseases grow worse through the infection from the Dakhmas.
7 Doubtful.
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