________________
BUNDAHIS.
50
4
the musk animal with a bag in which is their pleasant scent, the Bis-musk which eats the Bisherb, the black musk which is the enemy of the serpent that is numerous in rivers, and other species of musk animals. 23. Tenth, one hundred and ten species of birds; flying creatures (vey = vâi) such as the griffon bird 2, the Karsipt, the eagle, the Kahrkâs which they call the vulture, the crow, the Ardâ, the crane, and the tenth is the bat. 24. There are two of them which have milk in the teat and suckle their young, the griffon bird and the bat which flies in the night; as they say that the bat is created of three races (sardak), the race (âyina) of the dog, the bird, and the musk animal; for it flies like a bird, has many teeth like a dog, and is dwelling in holes like a musk-rat. 25. These hundred and ten species of birds are distributed into eight groups (khadûinak), mostly as scattered about as when a man scatters seed, and drops the seed in his fingers to the ground, large, middling, and small. 26. Eleventh, fish were created of ten
A kind of musk-rat; the bîs it eats is said to be the Napellus Moysis.
Pahl. sênô mûrûk, the sîmurgh of Persian tradition, and Av. mereghô saênô of Bahrâm Yt. 41.
9 See Chap. XIX, 16.
See Chap. XIX, 25.
Counting the 'flying creatures' and 'the vulture' as distinct species, the bat' is the tenth. It has been generally supposed that we should read 'eleventh,' and consider the bats as an eleventh group, especially as the MSS. call the next group (the fish) the 'twelfth;' but this view is contradicted by the remarks about the bats being mingled with those about the birds, and also by Zâdsparam in his Selections, Chap. IX, 14 (see App. to Bund.), not mentioning any group of bats among the other animals.
All the MSS. have 'twelfth,' but they give no 'eleventh' nor 'thirteenth,' though they have 'fourteenth' in § 29. These irre
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