The Bundahishn

Knowledge from the Zand

1897 | 25,140 words

A collection of texts related to Zoroastrian cosmogony and cosmology. The contents focuses on the Zoroastrianism's creation myth, and the first battles of 'Ahura Mazda' and 'Angra Mainyu'. Most of the chapters of the compendium date to the 8th and 9th centuries. The Bundahishn ("Creation"), or Knowledge from the Zand. Translated by E. W...

Chapter IX - The Battle With The Plants

The conflict waged with plants was that when they became quite dry. Amerodad the archangel, as the vegetation was his own, pounded the plants small, and mixed them up with the water which Tishtar seized, and Tishtar made that water rain down upon the whole earth. On the whole earth plants grew up like hair upon the heads of men. Ten thousand of them grew forth of one special description, for keeping away the ten thousand species of disease which the evil spirit produced for the creatures; and from those ten thousand, the 100,000 species of plants have grown forth.

From that same germ of plants the tree of all germs was given forth, and grew up in the wide-formed ocean, from which the germs of all species of plants ever increased. And near to that tree of all germs the Gokard tree was produced, for keeping away deformed (dushpad) decrepitude; and the full perfection of the world arose therefrom.

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