________________
358
SHẤYAST LÂ-SHAYAST.
to be held level with the heart of him who is the officiating priest (zôt), and at sraota? it is to be held level with the arm of him who is the officiating priest, so that while the warriors are in battle with foreigners (anâiran) they may be fuller of breath (vayô-girtar), and the husbandmen stronger-armed in the tillage and cultivation of the world.
10. The fifteen stanzas of Yå-skyaothana (Yas. XXXIV) are for this reason, because it is given for the destruction of those fifteen fiends who are disclosed in the medical part (bêshaz) of the Hâdôkht Nask! 11. The four repetitions (bår) of Mazda-admôi (Yas. XXXIV, 15) * are for the right coming on of the share of these five chieftainships (radih), the house-ruler, the village-ruler, the tribe-ruler, the province-ruler, and the supreme Zaratūsto.
12. The two repetitions of Ahyâ-yâsâ (Yas. XXVIII, 1)e are for this reason, that the sovereign (da hyapat) may not at once seize body, conscious
1 The first word in the third line of the stanza; but this, again, has to be guessed from a Pahlavi version in the MSS. which may be read va vâ-srôdâàn. s Or produced.'
In the last division of that Nask (see B. Yt. III, 25, note). • This last stanza of the Ahunavaiti Gatha is recited four times.
o See Yas. XIX, 50-52. The last of these rulers must have been the supreme pontiff or patriarch of the province, and in the province of Ragha (Rages or Raî, near Teheran) he was both temporal and spiritual ruler.
This first stanza of the Ahunavaiti Gâtha is recited twice, not only in its proper place (as the first stanza of each chapter is, in the Gâthas), but also at the end of every chapter of the Ahunavaiti Gâtha, while the officiating priest sprinkles the sacred twigs with the sacred milk or gâus givya, living-cow produce' (see Haug's Essays, pp. 405, 406).
Digitized by Google
