Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/30

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IN OLD IRÂN.
15
  1. a custom can be pointed out in the Avesta or in its Pahlavi Version.
  2. That the Pahlavi passages translated by a distinguished English Pahlavi savant, and supposed to have references 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 to supernatural conceptions relating to the reaction of the first progenitors of mankind.
  3. That the words of the Prophet Zarathushtra himself, which are preserved in one of the strophes of the Gâthâ Chap. LIII., express a highly moral ideal of the marriage relation.[1]
  1. ↑ Here let me draw attention to the opinion of Dr. L. H. Mills on the contents of the Gâthâs. In S. B. E. Vol. XXXI., p. 1., the translator observes:—"So far as a claim to a high position among the curiosities of ancient moral lore is concerned, the reader may trust himself freely to the impression that he has before him an anthology which was probably composed with as fervent a desire to benefit the spiritual and moral nature of those to whom it was addressed as any
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