No soul
will come and meet his departing soul and help it through the howls and
pursuit in the other world; nor will the dogs that keep the Cinvad
bridge (the bridge to paradise) help his departing soul through the
howls and pursuit in the other world." The _Avesta_ also conceives this
dog to be four-eyed. When a man dies, as soon as the soul has parted
from the body, the evil one, the corpse-devil (Druj Nasu), from the
regions of hell, falls upon the dead. Whoever henceforth touches the
corpse becomes unclean, and makes unclean whomsoever he touches. The
devil is expelled from the dead by means of the "look of the dog": a
"four-eyed dog" is brought near the body and is made to look at the
dead; as soon as he has done so the devil flees back to hell
(_Vendidad_, vii. 7; viii. 41). It is not easy to fetch from a
mythological hell mythological monsters for casual purposes, especially
as men are always engaged in dying upon the earth. Herakles is the only
one who, one single time, performed this notable "stunt." So the
Parsis, being at a loss to find four-eyed dogs, interpret the name as
meaning a dog with two spots over the eyes.
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