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EPISTLE I, CHAPTER XI, 7-12.
eminence of you listeners to the primeval religion consist in long-continued, supreme prosperity, through all happiness! then, through such thoughtful friends, the acquaintance with its difficult teaching and mighty words, which is to increase that gratitude of yours to me for my decisions, is made a blessing to you, if you observe therein a good idea which seems to you important, when it reaches your sight.
10. The correct writer and scribe is ordered that he do not alter any of the words (mârtk), while he writes a fair copy of this epistle of mine, which is written by me to you, and he orders some one to give it to that same man, Yazdân-pânak, along with that epistle, so that it may come to him3, for there are times when I seem aware that it is better so. 11. And may the angels increase and enlarge your many new things with full measure and complete exaltation! the pleasure, peace, righteousness, prosperity, commendation, and happiness of the powerful' who are all-controlling and happy-ending.
12. Mânûskihar, son of Yûdân-Yim, has written it in the day and month of Spendarmad, in the
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1 Reading nyôkhshîdârână, as in J, instead of avakhshidârână.
• Reading min, instead of mûn, 'who.'
To Zâd-sparam. This copy was that mentioned in Ep. II,
vii, I.
• Reading slam, as in J; the other MSS. have shnuman, 'propitiation,' the two words being nearly alike in Pahlavi letters. "Reading patûgânŏ; J has padvandâno, 'connections,' by inserting a stroke.
The fifth day of the twelfth month of the Parsi year; and, as Ep. III (which was evidently written after further consideration) is dated in the third month of A. Y. 250, this must have been written in A. Y. 249. The date of this epistle, therefore, corresponds to the 15th March, 881.
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