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104
DÎNKARD, BOOK VII.
is the worst existence rather than the best existence, and they promote difficulty. 45. Concerning them, too, I tell thee that they are more to be destroyed than the leaping (shaspo) serpent which is like a wolf or a lion, and they ever advance in malice and persecution from that time till when that man arrives who is Kitrô-mêhônòi the righteous, with the victorious club. 46. He has marched with fifty triplets of men ? who are disciples, powerful and tall, looking after duties and ordinances, wideshouldered, stout-armed, and very hairy (kabedmilih), so that their appearance is rough and of a black colour, wherefore the demon and the iniquity proceeding from him fear them. 47. He also smites the evil spirit, together with his creatures; and those three manifest branches, that worship the fiend with simultaneous worship, are really these who march for eminent service on horses, even the Turkish demons with dishevelled hair, the Arab, and also Shedâspô 4 the ecclesiastical Arûman.
So spelt here, but in Dk. IX, xli, 6, it is Kitrag-mêhôno, and other slight variations occur in the best MSS. of Bd. XX, 7, 31; XXIX, 5; Byt. III, 25, 26; Dd. XC, 3; but they can all be traced to an original Kitrô-mêhan = Av. Kithrô-maethanem, of the racial home,' a title applied both to the river and the immortal sacerdotal ruler of Kangdez. The latter is supposed to be Pêshyôtano, a son of king Vistâsp, who is expected to restore religious rites in Iran and throughout the world.
? With 150 disciples, as stated in Byt. III, 27, 29, 42. Here it is written levata 50 3-gabrâân.
3 Byt. III, 27, 29, 42, states that they wear black marten fur.
* In Byt. III, 3, 5, 8, 21, this name is written Shedâspth which can also be read Shedâsfas, and is probably a corrupt pronunciation of the name of some Byzantine emperor or general (such as Theodosius) who had signally defeated the Persians some time in the fifth to seventh century, in which period Zaratûst's millennium probably ended.
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