The larger portion of the Vendīdad is devoted to a description, with numberless repetitions, of the Mazdean laws of purification and the long ceremonies pertaining to them. Impurity or uncleanness may be described as the condition of a person or thing that is possessed of a demon, and the process of purification is for the purpose of expelling the evil presence. Death is the triumph of the demon, and therefore it is the principal cause of uncleanness; when a man dies, as soon as the soul has left the body, the Drūj Nasu, or Corpse-Drūj, comes from the regions of hell, and falls upon the body, and whoever thereafter touches the corpse is not only unclean himself, but every one whom he touches is also unclean.
The Drūj is expelled from the dead by the Sag-dīd, or “the look of the dog;” “a four-eyed dog,” or “a white one with yellow ears,” must be brought near the body, and made to look upon the dead, and as soon as he has done so the Drūj hastens back to hell.[[191]] The Drūj is expelled from the living by a process which is too revolting for description. The ceremonies are accompanied by the constant repetition of spells like the following: “Perish, O fiendish Drūj! Perish, O brood of the fiend! Rush away, O Drūj! Perish away to the regions of the north, never more to give unto death the living world.”
The feeling out of which these ceremonies grew was not original with Mazdeism; the Hindū also considered himself in danger while burning the corpse, and he cried aloud, “Away, go away, O Death! injure not our sons and our men.”[[192]]
The Pārsīs, not being able to find a four-eyed dog, interpreted the law to mean a dog with two spots above the eyes, while in practice they are still less particular, and the Sag-dīd may be performed by a house-dog, or by a dog four months old. As birds of prey are fiend-smiters as well as the dog, the devotee may claim their services when there is no dog at hand. The four-eyed dog, which the ceremony originally called for, is doubtless a reproduction of “the four-eyed dogs of the tawny breed of Saramā,” belonging to Yama,[[193]] which guard the realms of death in Hindū mythology. The identity of the four-eyed dog of the Pārsīs with the dogs of Yama is confirmed by the tradition that the yellow-eared dog watches at the head of the Chinvat bridge, and, as the souls of the faithful pass over, he barks to drive away the fiend who would drag them down to hell. Wherever a corpse is carried, death walks beside it all the way, from the house to the last resting-place, and the fatal presence constantly threatens the living who are near the path-way.
DISPOSITION OF THE DEAD.
As the centre of contagion is in the corpse, it must be disposed of in such a way that death may not be spread abroad. The old Indo-European customs have in this respect been completely changed by Mazdeism. The corpse was formerly either burned or buried; both of these customs, however, are held to be sacreligious in the Avesta. The elements, fire, earth, and water, are holy, and even during the Indo-Īrānian period they were already so considered, being represented in the Vedas as objects of worship. But this did not prevent the Hindūs from burning their dead, and the dead man was really considered as a traveler to the other world, while the kindly fire was supposed to carry him on flashing pinions to his heavenly abode. The funeral fire, like that of the sacrifice, was the god that goes from earth to heaven, the mediator most friendly to man.
In Persia, however, it remained more distant from him and represented the purest offspring of the good spirit; therefore no uncleanness could be allowed to enter it. Its only function appears to be the repelling of the fiends by its blaze. In every place where the Pārsīs are settled, an everlasting fire is still kept, which is always fed by perfumes and costly woods, and wherever its flames are carried by the wind, it kills thousand of fiends. No degradation must be inflicted upon this sacred element, even blowing it with the human breath is a crime, because the outgoing breath is unclean; burning the dead is therefore the most criminal act; in the time of Strabo[[194]] it was a capital crime, and the Avesta places it in the list of sins for which there is no atonement.
Water was looked upon in the same light, and throwing dead matter into it was as unpardonable as to pollute the sacred flame with its presence. The Magi are said to have overthrown a king for having built bath-houses, and the Jews were forbidden to practice their ablutions; in some cases the sick were even forbidden to drink it, unless it was decided that death would be caused by longer abstinence. The earth was equally holy, for in her bosom there dwelt Spenta Ārmaiti, the goddess of the earth, and to defile her sacred dwelling by burying the dead was also a deed for which there was no atonement.
In earlier times the Persians practiced burial even after burning had been forbidden. Cambyses aroused the national indignation by cremating the body of Amasis, and years later the Persians were still burying their dead. Afterward, however, when the Mazdean law became dominant, the worship of the earth was included, although it was sometime before it was considered as sacred as fire and water. In later times the Persians builded Dakhmas, or “Towers of Silence” for the bodies of their dead; these towers were about twenty feet high, and they enclosed an annular stone pavement on which the bodies were placed. These towers were usually built on the summit of a mountain far from the haunts of men. A barren cliff was chosen, free from trees or water, and the tower was even separated from the earth herself, for it was isolated by a layer of stones and bricks, while it was claimed that a golden thread ran between the tower and the earth. Here, afar from the world of men, the dead were left to lie “beholding the sun.” The Avesta and commentary are especially emphatic upon this point, for “it is as if the dead man’s life were thus prolonged, since he can still behold the sun.”