Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/68

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IN OLD IRÂN.
53

omission of any definite interpretation in the Pahlavi Version, may perhaps be that the technical meaning of the word was, even centuries after the compilation of the Avestâ, a thing too familiar to the native Zoroastrians to require any interpretation; or that the nature of the good work implied by Qaêtvadatha was too doubtful in the minds of the old Irânian priests to be definitely and lucidly explained.

Consequently, very little help can be obtained from the indigeneous authority of the Pahlavi translation of those Avestâ passages wherein the term Qaêtvadatha occurs. Fortunately, however, there is no of lack passages in the Pahlavi, which though sometimes very obscure and difficult, give us a meaning for the first member of the compound, viz., Qaêtu, and which is kh'ish or kh'ishih, meaning "self," "himself," "one's own" or "allied," "relation," individuality," &c. The Pahlavi meaning of self or relation is still preserved in the Mod. Pers. word kh'ish, and accords best with the etymology and the context. Dr. Spiegel translates

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