Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/18

In all the inquiries which have long engaged the attention of European Orientalists, their efforts have been directed almost exclusively to verifying the testimony of classical reports to the effect that marriage between the nearest bloodrelations was not an uncommon practice among the old Irânians in the times of the Achæmenidæ, the Arsacida and the Sâsânidæ. Nay, it has even come to pass that several European savants have claimed to have discovered positive evidence of such marriages in the Sacred Writings and in the later Pahlavi works of the Irânians themselves. Guided solely by their opinions, the Rev. J. van den Gheyn, S.J., in his well-known French Essay on "Comparative Mythology and Philology," has been led to remark with reference to the moral tenets of the Avestâ^[1]:—