Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/78

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
IN OLD IRÂN.
63

wân, the term Khvêtûk-dasih was only confined to marriages between first cousins.

But all these remarks, gentlemen, go to show that Dr. West does not agree with other scholars in tracing in the Sacred Writings of the Irânians the existence of such a custom in the times of the Avestâ, the Achæmenidæ, the Arsacidæ, or the Sâsânidæ generally; but he gives as his opinion, that it may perhaps have been advocated by some priests in Irân in the sixth century A. D. or later. Thus the speculation of several European savants, from Kleuker downwards, that the custom in question prevailed among the Avestâ people, has been dissipated by the inquiry of one of their own learned body.

However, in his essay on the "Meaning of Khvêtûk-das," Dr. West attempts to translate about thirty Pahlavi pasaages to show how far Khvêtûk-dasih may denote next-of-kin marriage in Pahlavi. Five of these reference are contained in the Pahlavi Translation of the Avesta, and two in the Pahlavi Commentary (P. T. Ys. XII. 9; Vsp.

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.