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CHAPTER XVII, 9-18.
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pointed and produced, a production not worthy, for its defilement of those purified and animals is contaminating, through contact again with men. 15. The crow (galâg) and such-like, through scorching away by the fire of the luminaries, become worthy; moreover, the affliction of that which is completely pure fire arises therefrom, as it is not able itself to come unto the scorched one, for then the defilement (darvâkh) of the scorcher by the most grievous gnawer would be possible.
16. But it is not proper to recount (angâstano) the devouring of the noxious creatures, for the spirit of the body is troubled when it observes the alarmed (vazid) spirituality which was in the body of those destroyed, the noxious creatures upon the goodly forms, and the mode and strangeness of their disintegration and spoliation. 17. And so it then becomes the more remedial way when, as it is ordered in revelation, the body fraught with corruption is placed on the ground of a clear mountainspur (kôf vakhsh); and, in order not to convey it to the water, plants, and men of the plain, it is fastened in the customary manner, so that the corpse-eating dogs and corpse-eating birds, which are not subject to the hand (dastô-âmûkŏ) of men, and are likewise not entertained as food, shall yet not drag any of it away for man's eating of dead
matter.
18. For streams and waters go themselves and
That is, it is better to adopt the customary mode of removing the corpse.
See Vend. VI, 93-97.
This is ordered only when the corpse is not placed in any enclosure.
4
* Or, as Vend. V, 49-62 describes it, the water is rained down by
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