Pahlavi Texts, Part III (SBE24), E.W. West, tr. [1885], at sacred-texts.com
1. The seventy-seventh subject is this, that, when a woman's infant is still-born, it is necessary to give her first something washed with ceremony and brought with fire-ashes 3, so that it may make the heart within her pure. 2. After that, for three days, it is altogether improper to give her water, or anything in which there is water or salt. 3. And these three days are from period to period 4, in such a
manner that, if the duty of mid-day 1 prayer has occurred, they extend till the mid-day prayer itself, and she is to pass over one other hour and it is then proper to swallow water. 4. After that, till the lapse of forty days, she is to sit apart again, and, afterwards, to undergo the Bareshnûm ceremony 2.
5. On the infant's becoming a four-months’ child, whenever it is still-born it is a dead body 3, for the reason that so long as it does not reach the fourth month life does not come to it. 6. And if after three months this affair occurs, one is to exercise great caution (i‘htiyât) and to insist strictly on this matter.
7. For our religion has reiterated on this matter that, if one be polluted and do not keep himself pure, so long as he is living he never becomes clean from that pollution. 8. That, if he wash his head ten thousand times in ceremonial ablution, he certainly does not any way become pure from it 4. 9. Because this pollution is not from without; it is from within every bone and vein and tendon; and water makes clean only anything that is on the skin. 10. Impurity which is in the bones, except through the liquid consecrated by the religious formula 5, does not otherwise become clean.
340:1 Only B29 and the Gugarâti have 'a second.'
340:2 B29 omits these twelve words.
340:3 So in B29, which agrees with Vend. VII, 163, but La, Lp are defective. The 'something' means consecrated bull's urine, as in Chap. LXXIV, 1; this, mingled with ashes, is prescribed as the first thing to be tasted by the woman.
340:4 That is, from the given hour to the same hour on the third day, although, from what follows, it appears that, if the given hour were in the middle of any period of the day, the third day would expire at the beginning of the third similar period. Whether the three days are to be inclusive, or exclusive, of the day when the term begins, that is, whether the term is to be nearly 48 or 72 hours, is not very clear.
341:1 Literally 'former, early.'
341:2 See Chap. XXXVI, 1 n.
341:3 And, therefore, to be treated with all the precautions necessary in dealing with a corpse to avoid the pollution alluded to in §§ 710. Hence the necessity of careful enquiry in doubtful cases, as recommended in § 6.
341:4 B29 omits § 8.
341:5 See Chap. XXXVI, 7 n.