Explore "The Ass with Three Legs" by Jorge Luis Borges on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Pliny attributes to Zarathustra, founder of the religion still professed by the Parsis of Bombay, the composition of two million verses; the Arab historian al-Tabari claims that Zarathustra's complete works as set down by pious calligraphers cover some twelve thousand cowhides. It is well known that Alexander of Macedonia had these parchments burned in Persepolis, but thanks to the retentive memory of the priests, it was possible to preserve the basic texts, and from the ninth century these have been supplemented by an encyclopedic work, the Bundahish, which contains this page:
Of the three-legged ass it is said that it stands in the middle of the ocean and that three is the number of its hooves and six the number of its eyes and nine the number of its mouths and two the number of its ears and one the number of its horn. Its coat is white, its food is spiritual, and its whole being is righteous. And two of its six eyes are in the place where eyes should be and two on the crown of its head and two in its forehead; through the keenness of its six eyes it triumphs and destroys.