History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

CHAP. IV.] RESURRECTION OF THE BODY. 193

of the gatherer,’ or ‘the bridge of the judge,’ which the soul of the pious alone can pass, while the wicked fall from it down into hell.”

As regards the resurrection of the body at the time of the last judgment, Dr. Haug is of opinion that “this important doctrine is a genuine Zoroastrian dogma which developed itself naturally from Spitama Zarathushtra’s sayings. There is not the slightest trace of its being borrowed from a foreign source. Besides it agrees completely with the spirit and tendency of the Parsi religion. All life of the good creation, especially that of man, bodily as well as spiritual, is a sacred pawn entrusted by God to man, who must keep his body free from impurity and his soul from sin. If death destroy the body (in the natural course) it is not the fault of man who falls to an inexorable fate; but it is considered as the duty of God, who is the preserver of all life, to restore all life that has fallen a prey to death, to destroy this

_~. arch-enemy of human life, and so make life ever-

lasting. This is to be done at the time of the resurrection. “In the Bundehesh an old song is embodied, the purport of which is to show that though it appears to short-sighted mortals impossible for the body (when once dissolved into its elements and those elements scattered in every direction) to be restored again, yet nothing is impossible for the hand of the Almighty

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