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EPISTLES OF MANÛSKIHAR.
CHAPTER II.
1. Then comes that itself which is dictated in the middle of your epistle, and, thereupon, it lays hold of me, and, owing to its hellish gloom, pallid appearance, and hellish effect, benediction is perplexedly dispensed by me in terror for my heart and mind; I have, also, grievously repented, as regards my own former arrangements in my warfare of violence-which were undeceptive in the balance pertaining to Rashnú of any real falsity of the co-existent one3 I may have produced.
2
2. Responsible for the malice and annoyance of unjust kinds which are encountering us is the fiend of great strength, who is unobserving, seductive, astute in evil, eager for causing annihilation (gastŏkun-varen), and full of deceit, so that it is possible for him to render doubtful, when so deceived, even him who is most a listener to essential righteousness, most desirous of steadfast truth, most performing proper religious customs, most acquainted with good ideas, most amazingly careful of his soul, most approved in the most wounding hell-brought conflict, and most at home (khânagiktům) in truth of all kinds, and to show him a semblance of reality in unreality, and of unreality in reality. 3. Just as even that similitude which is mentioned in revelation thus: 'He intends righteousness and considers
1 J has 'the writing.'
See Dd. XIV, 4.
* The evil spirit who is supposed to be, for a time, co-existent with the beneficent spirit of Aûharmasd.
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