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 2004

66
DÎNKARD, BOOK VII.
evil, where there became manifest, in the mode which is written, the descent of his life into so much punishment, due to hunger and thirst, heavy fetters, and other misery unto which the strength of human nature is attaining, but unto which it is not destined
-is manifested a great wonder to king Vistâsp and his officials, when his full-glorious person was found by them alive in awfulness, imprisonment, and those other transformations (padgastakih) of long-continued starvation.
70. One marvel is this, that the sacred beings contrived, for the sake of (val vahân-1) his preservation from that awfulness, a body possessing life, and on his account it became lifeless and imperceptible ; afterwards, in the great session of Vistâsp and the assembly of the world, Zaratûst, through the strength and blessedness of the true word, restored the same body anew, like that which is issuing in the statement of the wonder about the splendid horse of Vistâsp'.
71. One marvel is his telling and disclosing the thoughts of king Vistâsp and of those of the realm, and many other concealed matters, through spiritual perception.
72. One marvel is several matters of evil deceit (vad gamâs) which Dahâk had done in Bapel 2
1 This very slight allusion to the cure of Vistasp's horse by Zaratûst is sufficient to show that this legend existed in the ninth century; but the writer of the Dinkard seems inclined to trace it back to a tale that he vaguely relates in the earlier part of this section, and which he evidently found in older writings; this tale, however, does not mention a horse, but only an animated body. The Persian Zaratûst-nâma developes the legend of the sick horse, whose legs are drawn up to its belly, into 160 couplets.
? Babylon; see Yt. V, 29-31; XV, 19-21.
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