Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/441

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LIFE AFTER DEATH

his happiness is but the passing cloud of a rainy day; riches and wealth, titles and honours, distinctions of birth and race—all will be of no avail when death will at last come upon him.[1] Body is the lineament of man; he should not mistake it as his real self. Whoso moulds his actions with the higher object of the welfare of his soul gains this world by leaving good name and fame behind him, and obtains the next as his reward; but the slave to passions and evil desires, who lives solely for the body, loses both this world and the next as well.[2] The body of the one is lean in this world, but his soul is fat in heaven, whereas a man who pines after bodily pleasures is fattened in body in this world, but his soul is hungry and lean in the next world.[3] There is a remedy for every thing, but not for death.[4] A man may live a hundred years in this world, but death will at last overtake him.[5] Then at last he will sleep in the deep silence of death. The closed eyes will not open; the heart will not throb; hands and feet will not move; and the prince and peasant will leave the world in exactly the same manner.[6] The body will then be removed to its final resting-place, where go the great and the small, the master and the servant, the righteous and the wicked alike.[7]

A man may avoid the danger of tigers and wild beasts, of robbers and inimical persons, but he cannot live without fear of the demon of death.[8] He is helpless when death swoops down on him. Some die at an early age, almost as if they had never been born, and even those that live long have ultimately to quit the world.[9] Life is short in this world but long in the next.[10] Man should practise such good deeds during his lifetime that on his death-bed he should think it would have been better had he done even more of them, and avoid such acts for which he would have to wish during the last moments of his life that they had not been performed.[11] The individual who has been indif-

  1. ↑ Mkh. 2. 98–110.
  2. ↑ Mkh. 21. 10.
  3. ↑ BYt. 2. 56.
  4. ↑ Dk., vol. 12, bk. 6. A. 6, p. 37.
  5. ↑ AnAtM. 139.
  6. ↑ AnAtM. 143.
  7. ↑ AnAtM. 145.
  8. ↑ Dk., vol. 7, p. 452, 453.
  9. ↑ GS. 165.
  10. ↑ Ankhk. 5.
  11. ↑ Dk., vol. 10, bk. 6. 17, p. 6.
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