Zend Avesta Part 02

SR No.: 007672
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1883
Total Pages: 2221
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 41 MB

Page 1903

INTRODUCTION.
xiii
of Worship, is born, and confers with the archangels at the end of the millennium, when the sun stands still for twenty days and nights.
12. Chapter X describes the twelfth millennium, that of Allshedar-mâh, during which mankind continue to improve, are better supplied, and have fewer wants, while deaths occur only through old age and the executioner. During the last fifty-three years, they leave off eating meat and subsist upon vegetables and milk, for which latter they substitute water for the last three years. But the old tyrant Dahâk breaks loose, and Kerêsåspô has to be roused to smite him. In the thirtieth year before the end of this twelfth millennium Sôshậns, the Triumphant Benefiter, is born; KaiKhûsrð and his companions afterwards arrive to assist him, and the sun stands still for thirty days and nights.
13. Chapter XI describes how Sôshâns and his assistants destroy all the evil remaining in the world, during the course of fifty-seven years, while mankind subsist for seventeen years on vegetables, thirty years on water, and ten years on spiritual food. And, at the end of these fifty-seven years, Aharman and the fiend are annihilated, and the renovation for the future existence occurs.
14. Several of the details described in Dk. VII are briefly mentioned in Dk. V, i-iv, where they are introduced by a statement of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (Bukht-Narsih) assisted by Kai-Lôharâsp, father of Vistâsp. Excepting this account of the siege, in which the Jews are evidently called 'a congregation or tribe' (ram), and some remarks about the same 'tribe' at the end of Chapter IV, all the other details which are mentioned have reference only to Irânians; but they are said to be the sayings of Atûr-farnbag as to the MS. which that tribe call really their Gyémara (Chaps. I, 2, 3; IV, 8), as the name can be most plausibly read. Most of the strictly Iranian details have manifestly been derived from the same sources as were consulted by the writer of Dk. VII, that is, from the Pahlavi versions of the Spend and Kitradâd Nasks. It would probably be hazardous to suppose that the Jewish compilers of the Gemara could have had access to these
Digitized by Google