Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/109

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NEXT-OF-KIN MARRIAGES.
  1. passages gleaned from the pages of Greek and Roman literature, is wholly insufficient to support the odious charge made against the old Irânians of practising consanguineous marriages in their most objectionable forms.
  2. That no trace, hint, or suggestion of a custom of next-of-kin marriage can be pointed out in the Avestâ or in its Pahlavi Version.
  3. That the Pahlavi passages translated by a distinguished English Pahlavi savant, and supposed to refer to such a custom, cannot be interpreted as upholding the view that next-of-kin marriages were expressly recommended therein. That a few of the Pahlavi passages, which are alleged to contain actual references to such marriages, do not allude to social realities but only to supernatural conceptions relating to the creation to the first progenitors of mankind.
  4. That the words of the Prophet himself, which are preserved in one of the Stanzas of the Gâthâ, Chap. LIII., express a highly moral ideal of the marriage relation.
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