A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

The Dead 63
hands in it,
nor allow any other to do these things, but
they reverence rivers very greatly. . . .
So much am I able to say for certain from my own Treatment
knowledge about them: but what follows is reported about
their dead as a secret mystery and not with clearness, lb. 140.
namely that the body of a Persian man is not buried until
it has been torn by a bird or a dog. (The Magians I know
for a certainty have this practice, for they do it openly).
However that may be, the Persians cover the body with
wax and then bury it in the earth. Now the Magians are
distinguished in many ways from other men, as also from
the priests of Egypt; for these last esteem it a matter of
purity to kill no living creature except the animals which
they sacrifice; but the Magians kill with their own hands
all creatures except dogs and men, and they even make this
a great end to aim at, killing both ants and serpents and
all other creeping and flying things.
V. Treatment of the Dead
Ahura Mazda answered: "Thirty paces from the fire;
The question
thirty paces from the water; thirty paces from the conse- shall be
crated bundles of baresma; thirty paces from the faithful: ong^^o^
On that place they shall dig a grave, half a foot deep if dies in
the earth be hard, half the height of a man if it be soft; a storm?
they shall cover the surface of it with dust of bricks, or of
Avesta.
stones, or of dry earth. He is buried
And they shall let the Hfeless body lie there for two temporarily
-' •'
ma dwelling
nights, or three nights, or a month long, until the birds
begin to fly, the plants to grow, the floods to flow, and the
wind to dry up the waters from off the earth.
And when the birds begin to fly, the plants to grow, the
floods to flow, and the wind to dry up the waters from off
the earth, then the worshippers of Mazda shall make a