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INTRODUCTION, X.
lxxvii
of sins: in the times of Strabo it was a capital crime?, and the Avesta expresses the same, when putting it in the number of those sins for which there is no atonement %.
Water was looked upon in the same light. Bringing dead matter to it is as bad as bringing it to the fire 3. The Magi are said to have overthrown a king for having built bath-houses, as they cared more for the cleanness of water than for their own 4.
$ 9. Not less holy was the earth, or, at least, it became so. There was a goddess who lived in her, Spenta Armaiti; no corpse ought to defile her sacred breast : burying the dead is, like burning the dead, a deed for which there is no atonement. It was not always so in Persia : the burning of the dead had been forbidden for years 6, while the burying was still general. Cambyses had roused the indignation of the Persians by burning the corpse of Amasis: yet. years later, Persians still buried their dead. But the priests already felt scruples, and feared to defile a god. Later on, with the ascendancy of the Magian religion, the sacerdotal observances became the general law ?.
§ 10. Therefore the corpse is laid on the summit of a mountain, far from man, from water, from tree, from fire, and from the earth itself, as it is separated from it by a layer of stones or bricks'. Special buildings, the Dakhmas,
Strabo XV, 14; cf. Herod. III, 16. · Farg. I, 17; cf. Farg. VIII, 74• Farg. VII, 25-27; Strabo XV, 14; Herod. I, 138.
• King Balash (Josué le Stylite, traduction Martin, $ xx). It seems as if there were a confusion between Balash and Kavât; at any rate, it shows that bathing smacked of heresy. Jews were forbidden to perform the legal ablations (Fürst, Culturgeschichte der Juden, 9). . Farg. I, 13.
• From the reign of Cyrus. Still the worship of the earth seems not to have so deeply penetrated the general religion as the worship of fire. The laws about the disposal of the dead were interpreted by many, it would seem, as intended only to secure the parity of water and fire, and they thought that they might be at peace with religion if they had taken care to bury the corpse, so that no part of it might be taken by animals to fire or water (Farg. III, 41, n. 7).
Farg. VI, 44 seq.; VIII, 10 seq. Cf. IX, 11, n. 5. Moreover, the Dakhma is ideally separated from the ground by means of a golden thread, which is supposed to keep it suspended in the air (Ravâet, ap. Spiegel, Uebersetzung des Avesta II, XXXVI).
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