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DÎNKARD, BOOK VII.
this, too, about them: 'Zaratûst asked again thus : “Who is he who is the most salutary for a country, which the demons have exhausted of everything virtuous, over which his authority is brought and which is wicked and teaching falsehood ?" 15. Auharmazd spoke thus: “An autocrat (sâstâr), to cure a country, who has not gone mad (that is, he does not annoy the good) and is well-directing (that is, he gives virtuous commands), who is also of noble race, and likewise a priest who is acquainted with war, of a famous province, and righteous, are most salutary for that country. 16. And I tell thee this, that the apostasy of destruction is just like the four-legged wolf which the world gives up to running astray (vardak-takhshisnih) (that is, owing to its action they are leading it off as astray; which is so that even he who is not opulent is rendered sickly, that they (the apostates) may take away his things by the hand of the assassin (khûnyân); and they shall lead the world, the dwelling for his residence, into wandering. 17. But that wicked (avârûno) strife descended upon that country, besides that wicked demon-worship, besides that wicked slander; and not even that wicked strife, nor that wicked demonworship, nor that wicked slander, is dissipated from
bodied,' because we are told that Tansar, or Tanvasar, was so called on account of all his limbs being covered with hair (vars). This statement occurs in the introduction to Tanvasar's letter to Gushnaspshah (Ar. Gasnasf-shâ h), king of Padashkhvârgar (Ar. Farshvâdgar) and Tabaristân; and is made on the authority of an old Pahlavi copyist, Bahrâm Khürzâd, whose Pahlavi was translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa in the middle of the eighth century, and that into Persian early in the thirteenth century (see Darmesteter's edition in Journal Asiatique for 1894, pp. 185-250, 502-555).
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