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NEXT-OF-KIN MARRIAGES.

Zoroastrian household should be given to devotion or pious resignation to the Will of the Supreme Lord of the Zoroastrian religion.

There now remain two passages which claim our particular attention. One of these belongs to the book of the Ardâ Virâf, another to the Dinkard in the Twenty-first Fargard of the Bagân Nask. The passage in Virâf in which European scholars discover the alleged practice of marriage between brothers and sisters, runs as follows:—"Virâf had seven sisters, and all these seven sisters were like a wife unto Virâf."—They spoke thus: "Do not this thing, ye Mazdayasna, for we are seven sisters and he is an only brother, and we are all seven sisters like a wife unto that brother." Here arises an important question, whether it is possible to conclude hence that those seven sisters were actually married to Virâf, or that they were merely dependent upon him for their sustenance, just as a wife is dependent upon her husband. It is, indeed, characteristic that the sisters do not call Virâf their husband,

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