1. Seven chieftains of the planets have come unto the seven chieftains of the constellations, as the planet Mercury unto Tishtar, the planet Mars unto Haptoring, the planet Jupiter unto Vanand, the planet Venus unto Sataves, the planet Saturn unto the great one of the middle of the sky, Gochihr and the thievish Mushpar, provided with tails, unto the sun and moon and stars.

2. The sun has attached Mushpar to its own radiance by mutual agreement, so that he may be less able to do harm.

3. Of Mount Alburz it is declared, that around the world and Mount Terak, which is the middle of the world, the revolution of the sun is like a moat around the world; it turns back in a circuit owing to the enclosure of Mount Alburz around Terak.

4. As it is said that it is the Terak of Alburz from behind which my sun and moon and stars return again.

5. For there are a hundred and eighty apertures in the east, and a hundred and eighty in the west, through Alburz; and the sun, every day, comes in through an aperture, and goes out through an aperture; and the whole connection and motion of the moon and constellations and planets is with it: every day it always illumines three regions and a half, as is evident to the eyesight.

6. And twice in every year the day and night are equal, for on the original attack, when it went forth from its first degree, the day and night were equal, it was the season of spring; when it arrives at the first degree of Kalachang the time of day is greatest, it is the beginning of summer; when it arrives at the sign Tarachuk the day and night are equal, it is the beginning of autumn; when it arrives at the sign Vahik the night is a maximum, it is the beginning of winter; and when it arrives at Varak the night and day have again become equal, as when it went forth from Varak.

7. So that when it comes back to Varak, in three hundred and sixty days and the five Gatha days, it goes in and comes out through one and the same aperture; the aperture is not mentioned, for if it had been mentioned the demons would have known the secret, and been able to introduce disaster.

8. From there where the sun comes on on the longest day to where it comes on on the shortest day is the east region Sawahi; from there where it comes on on the shortest day to where it goes off on the shortest day is the direction of the south regions Fradadhafshu and Widadhafshu; from there where it goes in on the shortest day to where it goes in on the longest day is the west region Arezahi; from there where it comes in on the longest day to there where it goes in on the longest day are the north regions Wourubareshti and Wourujareshti.

9. When the sun comes on, it illumines the regions of Sawahi, Fradadhafshu, Widadhafshu, and half of Xwaniratha; when it goes in on the dark side, it illumines the regions of Arezahi, Wourubareshti, Wourujareshti, and one half of Xwaniratha; when it is day here it is night there.

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Finnish, and Norse traditions. It includes King James biblical text and Apocrypha, Pickthall's Quran, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Legge's Four Books, Tao Te Ching, and Book of Poetry, Chamberlain's Kojiki, West's Bundahishn, Kern's Lotus Sutra, Haug and West's Arda Viraf, Crawford's Kalevala, and Bellows' Poetic Edda.

The committed manifests and chapter files currently describe 121 books, 2,724 chapters, and 63,141 verse records. In poetry and prose works, a verse record can represent a line or paragraph rather than a canonically numbered scriptural verse.

Licensing

The application source is AGPL-3.0. Generated text downloads and their structured arrangement are CC BY-SA 4.0; the underlying historic source texts are treated as public-domain inputs. The corpus metadata therefore describes the distributed arrangement with its CC BY-SA license rather than the Public Domain Mark.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance is an exact-word occurrence index with linked records grouped by work. Related Passages is separate: a TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) cosine-similarity index compares chapter vocabulary after stop-word removal and stores up to five cross-book matches above its threshold. It is a lexical discovery aid, not a claim of historical or theological equivalence.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. Light and dark themes are available through the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

Scripture is part of a suite of educational simulations at a9l.im. Explore particle physics with Geon, redistricting with Gerry, or cellular metabolism with Cyano.