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CHAPTER LXXXVII, 2-LXXXVIII, 7.
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who always come to us themselves and speak thus: 'For 350 dirhams we will always twice conduct all the religious rites and ceremonial with holy-water such as those which you have always ordered before for 400; only order us.' 4. Would a needy one, apart from the priestly men who always say that they are not, be authorised, or not?
5. The reply is this, that the priest to whom your predecessors have given a gift of 400 or 350 dirhams, for all the religious rites with holy-water, it is proper to consider particularly virtuous and faithful, when there is nothing else about him, on account of which he is otherwise. 6. A celebration of all the religious rites with holy-water, in which they shall use four pure animals1-and just according to the teaching of the high-priests they present to every single fire from one animal and one holywater-and the offering of holy-water unto the fire whose holy-water it is, and bringing it on to another fire apart from that holy-water, and the ceremonial cleansing of the holy-water they maintain by agreement in thy name, the superiors solemnize with approval, faithfully, and attentively; and the remuneration of 350 dirhams would be a balancing of when they conduct the religious rite at the place of undertaking it, and when it is undertaken as regards a distant district 2.
7. In Artakhshatar-gadman, within my memory,
1 Sheep or goats.
That is, it is a fair average charge.
The Huz. form of Ardashîr-khurrah, the name given by Ardashîr son of Pâpak, the first Sasanian king, to the city and district of Gôr, subsequently called Pîrâzâbâd (see Nöldeke's Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden, pp. 11, 19), about seventy miles south of Shîrâz.
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