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FARGARD XVIII.
195
9 (22). Ahura Mazda answered: 'It is the man that teaches a wrong Religion 1; it is the man who continues for three springs 2 without wearing the sacred girdle 3, without chanting the Gathas, without worshipping the Good Waters.
10 (25). “And he who should set that man at liberty, when bound in prison, does no better deed than if he should cut a man's head off his neok.
1.The deceiver Ashemaogha' (Comm.); the heretic. Cl. Farg. XV, 2.
3 'For three years' (Comm.)
3 The Kôstî, which must be worn by every Parsi, man or woman, from their fifteenth year of age (see below, $ 54 seq.); it is the badge of the faithful, the girdle by which he is united both with Ormazd and with his fellow-believers. He who does not wear it must be refused water and bread by the members of the community; he who wears it becomes a participator in the merit of all the good deeds performed all over the Zarathustrian world (Saddar 10 and 46). The Kostî consists of seventy-two interwoven filaments, and should three times circumvent the waist.... Each of the threads is equal in value to one of the seventy-two Hahs of the Izashnê; each of the twelve threads in the six lesser cords is equal in value to the dawâzdih hamâist ...; each of the lesser cords is equal in value to one of the six Gahanbârs; each of the three circumventions of the loins is equal in value to humat, good thought, hukhat, good speech, huaresta, good work; the binding of each of the four knots upon it confers pleasure on each of the four elements, fire, air, water, and the earth' (Edal Daru, apud Wilson, The Parsi Religion Unfolded, p. 163).
Another piece of clothing which every Parsi is enjoined to wear is the Sadara, or sacred shirt, a muslin shirt with short sleeves, that does not reach lower than the hips, with a small pocket at the opening in front of the shirt, the so-called girîbân or kissai karfa, 'the pocket for good deeds.' The faithful man must, while putting on his Sadara, look at the girîbân and ask himself whether it is full of good deeds.
• See Introd. III, 10. Cf. $ 12.
• Doubtful. The Commentary seems to understand the sentence as follows: "He who should free him from hell would thus per
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