Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/77

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NEXT-OF-KIN MARRIAGES.

are put forward by the Pahlavi savant for his personal view, that next-of-kin marriages were advocated by Persian priests in the later years of the Sâsânian monarchy.

It must be noticed here that this later opinion of Dr. West differs completely, as regards the age in which the alleged custom might have prevailed, from what was previously asserted in the first part of his "Pahlavi texts" (S. B. E., Vol. V., p. 389, note 3), where the learned author observes:—"But it is quite conceivable that the Parsi priesthood, about the time of the Mahomedan conquest, were anxious to prevent marriages with strangers, in order to hinder conversions to the foreign faith, and that they may, therefore, have extended the range of marriage among near relations beyond the limits now approved by their descendants." Again, in a note to Chapter IV. of his English translation of the "Dînâ-î-Maînôgî-Khirad," Pahlavi texts, Part III. (S. B. E., Vol. XXIV., p. 26), he says that some centuries before the composition of that book, i. e. long before the reign of Noshîr-

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