________________
CHAPTER XXXVII, 29-35.
89
and smite the wizards and witches who rush about below them, and struggle to perplex by injury to the creatures; they make all such assailants become fugitives2. 33. And through their revolution the ascents and descents, the increase and diminution (narafsisno), of the creatures shall occur, the flow and ebb of the seas, and the increase of the dye-like blood of the inferior creatures"; also owing to them and through them have elapsed the divisions of the days, nights, months, years, periods, and all the millenniums (hazagrôk zimân) of time.
4
34. He also appointed unto our forefathers the equipment which is their own, a material vesture, a sturdy bravery, and the guardian spirits of the righteous; and he provided that they should remain at various times in their own nature, and come into worldly vesture. 35. And those for great hosts and many slaves are born, for the duties of the period, into some tribe; he who has plenty of offspring is like Fravâk', he who is of the early law
1 Below the sun, moon, and stars which protect the creatures. "Literally 'springers back.'
Reading dâmiko, but the word is unusual; it might be read dahmiko, 'of the holy man,' or be considered a corruption of damiko, 'earth.'
3
Reading rangmâno, but the word is doubtful.
5 Five folios of text are here interpolated in J, of which four contain the passage (Ep. II, vi, 4-ix, 7) omitted at the end of that MS., and the fifth contains a passage on the same subject as Ep. III, and which may possibly be part of the text missing in Ep. III, 11.
Meaning that the unembodied spirits of men should enter upon their worldly existence.
7 The great-grandson of the primeval man, Gâyômard, and the forefather of the fifteen races of undeformed human beings (see Bd. XV, 25-31, XXXI, 1).
Digitized by Google
