[315] Ibid. Farg. iv. 49 (bis)-55.
[316] Mihir Yasht, i. 2.
[317] Ibid. xxix. 116, 117.
[318] The Moral Ideal, 3d ed., pp. 71 ff. It is significant that the sacred standard of the early Persians was the apron of a blacksmith.
[319] Vendîdâd, Farg. iii. 31.
[320] Ibid. Farg. iii. 4.
[321] Laws of Manu, x. 84.
[322] Vendîdâd, Farg. iii. 38, 39.
[323] The king who reigned in Persia at the time of Nero, going from Asia to Italy, traveled by land along the shore instead of going by ship, “because the Magi are forbidden to defile the sea” (James Darmesteter, Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv, p. xl). But the anxious observance by the Persians of the requirements of the code is best disclosed in the disposition which they made of their dead. Since corpses could neither be burned nor buried nor thrown into the water without defiling a sacred element, they were exposed on the summits of mountains or on the top of low towers (dakhmas), the so-called “Towers of Silence,” that the flesh might be eaten by birds of prey.
[324] Zend-Avesta, pt. ii, Yasht xxii (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxiii, pp. 314 ff.).