BABYLON AND PERSIA

THE VENDIDAD. THE LESSER AVESTA. I35thread, not even so much as a maid lets fall in spinning. Whosoeverthrows any clothing on a dead body " (because it would be wasted,as nothing could cleansethem of the pollution of such contact)," even so much as a maid lets fall in spinning, is not a pious manwhilst alive, nor shall he, when dead, have a place in the happyrealm.He shall go away into the world of fiends, into that darkworld, made of darkness, the offspring of darkness."The modern Parsis, indeed, do clothe their dead,but the shroud must be made of old, worn-out mate¬rial, the older the better, only well washed.18. But the most horrible and dangerous offiends is the fiend of corruption and contagion, per¬sonified in the Druj Nasu, who takes possession ofthe body at the very instant that' the breath leavesit, " rushing upon it from the regions of the north,*in the shaj^e of a raging fly, . . . the foulest ofKhrafstras," and thence, as from a citadel, deals " in¬fection, pollution, and uncleanness " on all around,even to the tenth row of those near the corpse, andfurther still, for each manimparts the uncleannessto his neighbor, only it growsweaker with eachremove from the centre of infection,the corpse.It has been very plausibly remarked that " in the flywhich is attracted by the smell of dead flesh theysaw the fiend which takes possession of the corpsein the name of Angra-Mainyu." (Justi, " Geschichteder Perser.")It is to exorcise the Nasu that thesagdid ceremony is performed (see pp. 93-94), andthose same " four-eyed or yellow-eared dogs " must bemade to pass several times along the way by which'* Hell lies in the North, where its entrance is in the mountains o£the daevas, Mount ArezOra.