Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/75

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NEXT-OF-KIN MARRIAGES.

ancient practices of Mazda-worship—the Parsis are perfectly justified in believing that their religion did not originally sanction marriages between those who are next-of-kin."

The References to Khvêtûk-dât or Khvêtûk-dasih in Pahlavi.

III. In reference to the third proposition:—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; and 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 of the first progenitors of mankind.—I beg to call your attention again to the exhaustive essay on this subject by the English Irânist, Dr. West, who seems to have raked the extensive field of Pahlavi literature, and collected with laborious industry all the Pahlavi passages bearing

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