XIII. Spend Nask

Pahlavi Texts, Part IV (SBE37), E.W. West, tr. [1892], at sacred-texts.com

XIII. SPEND NASK ¹.

Dk. VIII, Chap. XIV, 1, probably refers to the passage that contained the statement thus quoted in Sls. X, 4, XII, 11:—'It is revealed in the Spend that towards Dûkdâv, the mother of Zaratûst, when she was pregnant with Zaratûst, every night for three nights a leader with a hundred and fifty demons rushed (or came) for the destruction of Zaratûst, yet, owing to the existence of the fire in the dwelling, they knew no means of accomplishing it.'

Dk. VIII, Chap. XIV, 8, probably refers to the passage that contained the statement alluded to in AV. XXXII and thus quoted in Sls. XII, 29:—'As in the Spend it was shown to Zaratûst about one man, that all his limbs were in torment, but one foot was outside; and Zaratûst enquired of Aûharmazd about the cause of it; and Aûharmazd said that he was a man, Davâns ² by name; he was a ruler over thirty-three districts, and no good work was ever practised by him, except one time when fodder was conveyed by him to a sheep with that one foot.'

p. 470

No allusion to the following two passages, quoted from the Spend, has been noticed in Dk. VIII, Chap. XIV:—

In Sls. XII, 3, it is said that 'in the Spend it is revealed that a fire, when they shall make it quite clean from its chilled charcoal, has as much comfort as a man whose clothing they shall make clean.'

In Sls. XII, 15, it is said that 'in the Spend and Nihâdûm the high-priests have taught that the duty and good works which a son performs become as much the father's as though they had been done by his own hand.'

Footnotes

469:1 The short account of this Nask, in Dk. VIII, contains 347 Pahlavi words, which would represent about 20,500 words of Pahlavi version, according to the proportion guessed in the case of Nask XII. But, this being a Gâthic Nask, the proportion of Avesta to Pahlavi ought to be that calculated for the Gâthic Nasks I, II, III, XXI, which would give about 9,900 words of Avesta text for this Nask. The seventh book of the Dinkard, whose contents are very similar to those attributed to the Spend Nask, contains about 16,000 Pahlavi words.

469:2 A personification of the Av. davãs of Yas. XXXI, 10 c.