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Pahlavi Texts, Part I (SBE05), E.W. West, tr. [1880], at sacred-texts.com


CHAPTER X.

1. As he (Aharman) came sixthly to Gâyômard there was arrayed against him, with Gâyômard, the

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pure propitious liturgy (mânsarspend), as heard from Gâyômard; and Aûharmazd, in pure meditation, considered that which is good and righteousness as destruction of the fiend (drûgô). 2. And when he (Gâyômard) passed away eight kinds of mineral of a metallic character arose from his various members; they are gold, silver, iron, brass, tin, lead, quicksilver (âvgînakŏ), and adamant; and on account of the perfection of gold it is produced from the life and seed.

3. Spendarmad received the gold of the dead Gâyômard 1, and it was forty years in the earth. 4. At the end of the forty years, in the manner of a Rîvâs-plant, Mashya and Mashyôî 2 came up, and, one joined to the other, were of like stature and mutually adapted 3; and its middle, on which a glory came, through their like stature 4, was such that it was not clear which is the male and which the female, and which is the one with the glory which Aûharmazd created. 5. This is that glory for which man is, indeed, created, as it is thus said in revelation:

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[paragraph continues] 'Which existed before, the glory 1 or the body?' And Aûharmazd spoke thus: 'The glory was created by me before; afterwards, for him who is created, the glory is given a body so that it may produce activity, and its body is created only for activity.' 6. And, afterwards, they changed from the shape of a plant into the shape of man 2, and the glory went spiritually into them.


Footnotes

183:1 Compare Bund. XV, 1.

183:2 The MS. has Mashâî Mashâyê, but see Bund. XV, 6. The Avesta forms were probably mashya mashyôi (or mashyê), which are regular nominatives dual, masculine and feminine, of mashya, 'mortal,' and indicate that they were usually coupled together in some part of the Avesta which is no longer extant. Pâzand writers have found it easy to read Mashyanî instead of Mâshyôî.

183:3 Reading ham-basnŏ ham-dakhîk, but whether this is more likely to be the original reading than the ham-badisn va ham-dasak of Bund. XV, 2, is doubtful. The last epithet here might also be read ham-sabîk, 'having the same shirt,' but this is an improbable meaning.

183:4 It is evident that ham-bandisnîh, 'mutual connection,' in accordance with Bund. XV, 3, would be preferable to the ham-basnŏîh, 'like stature,' of this text.

184:1 The old word nismô, 'soul' (see Bund. XV, 3, 4), has become corrupted here (by the omission of the initial stroke) into gadman, 'glory.' This corruption may be due either to Dâd-sparam not understanding the word (in which case the Bundahis must have been an old book in his time), or else to some later copyist confounding the old word for 'soul' with the better-known 'glory' of the Iranian sovereigns.

184:2 Bund. XV, 5.


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