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BUNDAHIS.
20. Then all men will pass into that melted metal and will become pure; when one is righteous, then it seems to him just as though he walks continually in warm milk; but when wicked, then it seems to him in such manner as though, in the world, he walks continually in melted metal.
21. Afterwards, with the greatest affection, all men come together, father and son and brother and friend ask one another thus: 'Where has it1 been these many years, and what was the judgment upon thy soul? hast thou been righteous or wicked?' 22. The first soul the body sees, it enquires of it with those words (gûft). 23. All men become of one voice and administer loud praise to Aûharmazd and the archangels.
24. Aûharmazd completes his work at that time, and the creatures become so that it is not necessary to make any effort about them; and among those by whom the dead are prepared, it is not necessary that any effort be made. 25. Sôshyans, with his assistants, performs a Yazisn ceremony in preparing the dead, and they slaughter the ox Hadhayôs2 in that Yazisn; from the fat of that ox and the white Hôm they prepare Hûsh, and give it to all men, and all men become immortal for ever and everlasting. 26. This, too, it says, that whoever has been the size of a man, they restore him then with an age of forty years; they who have been little when not dead, they restore then with an age of fifteen years; and they give every one his wife, and
3
1 K20 has 'have I;' probably hômanîh, 'hast thou,' was the original reading.
2 See Chap. XIX, 13.
See Chap. XXVII, 4.
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