Pahlavi Texts, Part III (SBE 24) · 138 of 187

Chapter LI

1.The fifty-first subject is this, that it is incumbent on every one to send a child to school, and to teach it something. 2. Because every duty and good work that a child performs is just as though the father and mother had performed it with their own hands. 3. Therefore it is necessary to make an effort, so that they may teach them something good, and make them aware of good works and sin; for they are doing that on account of their own souls, so that those children may be courageous in doing good works.

4 . If they are not taught, they then perform less duty and good works, and less reaches the souls of the father and mother. 5. And it also happens that if they do not deliver children to school, and do not teach them anything, and they become bold in committing sin, that sin becomes fixed on the necks of the father and mother.

6.Therefore they have decided rightly who teach them something, especially what is proper and improper according to revelation; because the chief principle is this, whether, through the duty of this world, a good or bad result is coming hereafter.

313:3 Lp, B29 insert ‘because.’

313:4 B29 has ‘that commission of sin.’

313:5 B29 has ‘rightly for the children, at the time when they.’