The Old Ways

Zoroastrian · The Book of Arda Viraf · 73 of 96

Chapter 78. [Adultery and infanticide]

tr. Martin Haug and E. W. West (1872)

1. Then I saw the soul of a woman (2) who ever dug an iron hill with her breasts; (3) and an infant cried from that side of the hill, and the cry ever continued; (4) but the infant comes not to the mother, nor the mother to the infant. 5. And I asked thus: 'What sin was committed by this body, whose soul suffers so severe a punishment?' 6. Srosh the pious, and Adar the angel, said (7) thus: 'This is the soul of that wicked woman who, in the world, became pregnant, not from her own husband, but from another person; (8) and she said thus: "I have bot been pregnant." (9) She also destroyed the infant.'