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EPISTLES OF MANÛSKIHAR.
severance from, and contest with, Adharmazd and Zaratust become more incalculably perplexing. 15. And this, too, is my summing up (khapîr)1-when your own acquaintance with the religion and salvation of soul are in such force-by the parable (ânguni-altako) of that physician of the body who, when they asked about destroying the toothache, thereupon gave his reply thus: 'Dig it out!' and they rejoined thus: 'He is always wanted as our physician, so that he may cure even a tooth which is diseased;' I would extract its teeth more plentifully and with more suspicion than he.
2
330
16. And if, also, those of the good religion in the country of Iran be, therefore, always in want of the learning and acquaintance with religion of his priestly lordship, so that he disperses the profession and the preparation and management of the remedy of many diseases, then he throws it away as a profession, and there is not much of a necessity for the wisdom and learning of his priestly lordship. 17. For there are some of the present time would never vouchsafe approval of a presiding fire, which is in many modes an advance of foreign habits; and of many things which are in writing, of a nature easier and more comfortable in a worldly sense, they offer and
1
J converts the phrase into 'very heinous to me,' by reading avir and adding girân.
That is, he would drive the morbid ideas from his brother's
mind.
• Meaning the practice of the Bareshnûm ceremony, for which the priests were specially required.
Probably because they saw no necessity for the presence of the fire at the sacred ceremonies. He is warning his brother that his heretical teachings would soon make the people imagine that they could dispense with the priesthood altogether.
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