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EPISTLE II, CHAPTER I, 9-14.
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it is known that if it were a statement of yours in the assembly of the Tughazghuz', you would have been still less a speaker in private.
13. I consider that you are as much under-hand (afr) about this, as regards yourself, as Zaratast 2 the club-footed (a pafróbd) when he arranged his garments (vakhshakiha), and his club-foot is itself overspread thereby even to himself, so that he was then approved as good by some of those of Kirmân* when they heard of it, and those of Råto (Razikâ no) wrote a reply that, if he should be appointed by you also at a distance, he would then be approved by them likewise as good. 14. This idea of yours is more heinous than that act of his, the reply from various sides is more mischievous, the disgrace among the people is more unslumberable, the load upon the soul is more consumingly heavy, and the
1 The MSS. have Tughzghuz in Pazand. Mas'audi states (A.D. 943) that the Taghazghaz were a powerful Turkish tribe who dwelt between Khurâsân and China, in and around the town of Küsân, and not very far from the supposed sources of the Ganges. They had become Manicheans, having been converted from idolatry to the heretical form of Mazda-worship taught by Mazdak (see Mas'âudi, ed. Barbier de Meynard, vol. I, pp. 214, 288, 299, quoted at length in a note to Sls. VI, 7). It would seem from the allusion in our text that Zad-sparam had recently been among these Taghazghaz, and might have imbibed some of their heretical opinions, so as to lead to this controversy with his brother and the orthodox people of Sîrkân. That he had recently been in the extreme north-east of Khurâsân is further shown by the allusion to Sarakhs in Chap. V, 3.
* Evidently some recent pretender to the supreme high-priesthood, who had endeavoured to conceal the deformity that disqualified him for that office.
• That is, fit for the dignity he aspired to. • Here written Gîrmân (see Dd. XCIV, 13). * Near Teheran.
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