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Pahlavi Texts, Part III (SBE24), E.W. West, tr. [1885], at sacred-texts.com


CHAPTER XIX.

1. The nineteenth subject is this, that the performance of agriculture is like that when some one is performing the ceremonial of the sacred beings, and it is necessary to maintain much respect for agriculturists; it is also necessary to keep trouble and strife far from them.

2 For it is declared in revelation, that, as to every one who replants a shrub, while that shrub or tree exists at the place, every good work that every one, who eats of that shrub, does in that state of repletion becomes the agriculturist's, just like those which are done by his own hand. 3. If any one orders it, just as that good work occurs 1 much new repose (râ‘hat) and comfort reach his soul 2. 4. As to corn and grain (‘hubûb) and whatever they sow, it is just like this 3, because, as regards every one who eats wheat, barley, and other grains, and performs duty and good works, they become those of the sower of 4 those grains, just as those which are performed by his own hand. 5. Because, for the life of mankind a crop was necessary, the creation of a

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creator 1 after the sacred being, the most high 2, owing to the work of the agriculturist. 6. For every one who eats anything dies, therefore, as regards that person by whose work the life of mankind is established, it is necessary to consider him valuable and precious.


Footnotes

281:1 Lp, B29 have 'is performed.'

281:2 Lp, B29 add 'therefrom.'

281:3 B29 adds 'way.'

281:4 La omits the rest of this chapter, as well as the words 'they become,' by mistake.

282:1 B29, J15 omit these five words.

282:2 J15 has 'after its creation by the sacred being, the creator.' The alteration of this sentence, in B29 and J15, seems due to their writers’ reluctance to attribute the power of creating, even figuratively, to the mere producer of a crop.


Next: Chapter XX