Vendidad: Difference between revisions

|origin={{tip|Pahlavi}}

|description=The first book (''Nosk'') in the collection of Zend fragments usually known as the ''Zend‐Avesta''. The ''Vendidâd'' is a corruption of the compound‐word “Vidaêvo‐dâtern”, meaning “the anti‐ demoniac law ”, and is full of teachings how to avoid sin and defilement by purification, moral and physical — each of which teachings is based on Occult laws. It is a pre‐eminently occult treatise, full of symbolism and often of meaning quite the reverse of that which is expressed in its dead‐ letter text. The ''Vendîdâd,'' as claimed by tradition, is the only one of the twenty‐one Nosks (works) that has escaped the ''auto‐da‐fé ''at the hands of the drunken Iskander the Rûmi, he whom posterity calls Alexander the Great — though the epithet is justifiable only when applied to the brutality, vices and cruelty of this conqueror. It is through the vandalism of this Greek that literature and knowledge have lost much priceless lore in the Nosks burnt by him. Even the Vendidâd has reached us in only a fragmentary state. The first chapters are very mystical, and therefore called “mythical” in the renderings of European Orientalists. The two “creators” of “spirit‐matter” or the world of differentiation — Ahura‐ Mazda and Angra‐Mainyu (Ahriman) — are introduced in them, and also Yima (the first man, or mankind personified). The work is divided into ''Fargards'' or chapters, and a portion of these is devoted to the formation of our globe, or terrestrial evolution. (See'' Zend‐'' ''Avesta''.) {{ctd-source|TG}}.

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