Book Title: Sacred Laws of Aryas
Author(s): Gorge Buhler
Publisher: Oxford


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Page 714
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226
VENDIDÂD.
plants that had been growing up around the tree of eternal life, the white Hôm or Gaskerena (5 4).
This Thrita is mentioned only once again in the Avesta, in Yasna IX, 7, where be appears to have been one of the first priests of Haoma. This accounts for his medical skill; as Haoma is the plant of eternal life, it is but natural that one of his first priests should have been the first healer.
This Fargard has only an allusion to the origin of the knifemedicine, which was, as it seems, revealed by Khshathra Vairya ($ 3). The last paragraphs ($$ 6-12) deal with the spell-medicine.
The functions ascribed here to Thrita were sometimes conferred on his semi-namesake Thraêtaona! Hamza makes Thraêtaona the inventor of medicine '; the Tavids : against sickness are inscribed with his name, and we find in the Avesta itself his Fravashi invoked against itch, hot fever, humours, cold fever, incontinence, against the plagues created by the serpent.' We see from the last words of this passage that disease was understood as coming from the serpent; in other words, that it was considered a sort of poisoning', and this is the reason why the killer of the serpent (A si Dahaka) was invoked to act against it.
1. Zarathustra asked Ahura Mazda : “Ahura Mazda, most beneficent Spirit, Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Who was he who first of the healers?, of the wise, the happy, the wealthy, the glorious, the strong, the Paradhâtas 8, drove back sickness to sickness, drove back death to death'; and first turned away the point of
? See the Westergaard Fragments, II.
· Ed. Gottwaldt, p. 23; cf. Mirkhond, Early Kings of Persia, tr. by Shea, p. 152.
Formulas of exorcism. • Cf. Farg. VII, 58.
Yasht XIII, 131. • This theory, which modern science would not utterly reject, accounts for the great part which the serpent plays in the worship of Asklepios; as sickness comes from him, from him too must or may come the healing.
? Those who knew how to take care of their own bodies, like Isfandyâr: some say that no sword could wound him' (Comm.)
* The Paradhâta or Pêshdad, the kings of the first Iranian dynasty.
• That is to say, who kept sickness in bonds, who kept death in bonds' (Comm.)
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