Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/88

he was begotten. So Mashih and Mashyânih were called the offspring of that union between Gayômard and Spendârmat, or of 'the Khvêtûk-dasih between the son and the mother'; and since the first human pair was formed of brother and sister, viz., Mashih and Mashyânih, their union, which was an act in consonance with the Divine Will, came to denote the Khvêtûk-dasih between the brother and the sister.' This idea of Khvêtûk-dasih, it must be remembered, is a later development of the abstract and religious notion of a direct spiritual alliance with the Deity, or of self-devotion. The term was afterwards applied to the unions of the first progenitors of mankind, which were believed to have been brought about by the operation of the Creator Himself. In creating Man endowed with the knowledge of His Will, it was the Creator's design to raise up an opposition against the morally evil influence of Ahriman on earth. Accordingly, wherever the Khvêtûk-dasih between the father and the daughter, the son and the mother, the brother and the sister, are referred