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SHAYAST LA-SHAYAST.
sleep decease occurs, his renunciation of sin is accomplished'.
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CHAPTER V.
1. Of unseasonable chatter that of children of five years of age has no root; and from five years till seven years, when one is under the tuition of his
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necessary for counterbalancing sins were estimated by the same unit of weight. Regarding the amount of a Srôsho-karanâm there is much uncertainty; according to Chap. XVI, 5 and Pahl. Vend. VI, 15 it is the same as a Farmân, and this appears to be the case also from a comparison of § 10 with Pahl. Vend. XVIII, 116 (see note on § 10); but according to Chap. XI, 2 it is half a Farmân, and the Farmân is also probably the degree meant by the frequent mention of three Srôshô-karanâms as the least weight of sin or good works that will turn the scale in which the soul's actions are weighed after death (see Chap. VI, 3). This uncertainty may perhaps have arisen from aê, 'one,' and the cipher 3 being often written alike in Pahlavi. But, besides this uncertainty, there is some discordance between the various accounts of the actual weight of a Srôshokaranâm, as may be seen in Chaps. X, 24, XI, 2, XVI, 5. As a weight the Srôshô-karanâm is not often mentioned in the Pahlavi Vendidad, for wherever it translates the Av. sraoshô-karana it means 'lashes with a scourge;' but the weight of one Srôshôkaranâm is mentioned in Pahl. Vend. VI, 15, three Srôshô-karanáms in IV, 142, VII, 136, XVII, 11, XVIII, 55, 116, and five Srôshôkaranâms in XVI, 8.
'Patîtîkîh, 'the dropping' or renunciation of sin, is effected by confessing serious offences to a high-priest, and also by the recitation of a particular formula called the Patit, in which every imaginable sin is mentioned with a declaration of repentance of any such sins as the reciter may have committed. The priest ordains such atonement as he thinks necessary, but the remission of the sins depends upon the after performance of the atonement and the effectual determination to avoid such sins in future (see Chap. VIII, 1, 2, 8). See Chap. IV, 9.
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