THE interest with which I used to look forward to the publication of this work, the preparation of which afforded us innumerable happy hours, has been saddened for me of late by the death of my elder brother and senior partner in the undertaking. It was begun some twenty years ago when he was the Incumbent of St. Mary's, Tothill Fields, Westminster, and had but scanty leisure. It was continued and carried far toward completion in more favourable circumstances after his presentation by the Grocers' Company to the living of St. Mary le Bow, Cheapside, in 1887.
From early days my brother was devoted to the study of Oriental languages. His proficiency in Hebrew won him at Oxford the Pusey and Ellerton Scholarship in 1862 and the Kennicott in 1863. He was also a good Arabic and Syriac scholar. During his twenty-one laborious years first as Curate and then Incumbent at Westminster he never, I think, forewent for long his favourite branch of study, and I may add that we were engaged in revising a passage in our joint translation almost to within an hour of his sudden death from a wholly unsuspected heart-affection in April 1903.
He is, I think, fondly remembered by many. Such memories are in the nature of things but fleeting; but the written word remains, and I am fain to hope that by the publication of this work I may be raising to him an inconspicuous perhaps but lasting monument.
To the vast majority of English readers the Sháh-náma seems hardly to be known even by name—a fact not to be wondered at, considering how few references are made to it in current literature, and that this is actually the first attempt to give the subject-matter of the great Persian Epic at large in English. It has therefore seemed desirable that the translation should be accompanied by explanatory matter in the forms of Introduction, Note, and Argument. To prepare these has fallen to my lot, and I am accordingly responsible for the many faults of commission and omission that will be only too obvious to the eyes of scholars and experts in this branch of the subject. I am also responsible with my brother for the translation generally, and for its final form throughout. His share, had he lived, would have been larger and more important than mine, but his untimely death will tend to equalise our labours. On reviewing our work as a whole, I venture to hope that the English reader will gain from it a very fairly correct idea of the subject-matter of Firdausí's greatest achievement, and will at least learn from the Introduction and Introductory Notes where to turn for more scholarly and authoritative information on the subject.
I take this opportunity of thanking the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for their kind permission to make such illustrative extracts as I needed from those volumes of the Sacred Books of the East Series which contain the translations of the Zandavasta and Pahlaví Texts by the late Professor Darmesteter and the late Dr. E. W. West respectively. These translations, with their introductions and notes, are most valuable to the student of the Sháhnáma. I have also to thank my sister, Caroline Warner, and my nephew, George Redston Warner, for occasional help.
I hope to publish our translation a volume at a time, as circumstances permit.
EDMOND WARNER.
ELTHAM, February 1905.
ÍRÁN, the chief scene of Firdausí's Sháhnáma, is bounded on the north by the Steppes, the Caspian Sea, and the Kúr and Rion rivers, on the south by the Indian Ocean, on the east by the valley of the Indus, and on the west by that of the Tigris and Euphrates, and by the Persian Gulf. At present it includes Persia, Afghanistán, Baluchistán, and small portions of Russia and Turkey.
It is a lofty and for the most part a rainless tableland traversed by numerous mountain-ranges divided from each other by flat plains and falling away toward the centre, which is a desert white with salt scurf or dun with powdery dust. The mountains are highest round the edges of the tableland and intercept most of the rainfall. Some moisture, however, finds its way even into the rainless region, where it gathers during winter on the higher hills in the form of snow. This snow-water is carefully husbanded, and distributed by means of underground water-courses. The interior is, however, drying up, and city, village, and cultivated field are being gradually overwhelmed in dust and shifting sands.
Possibly as late as early historical times very different conditions prevailed. The lower plains and depressions once formed a series of lakes that suggested the appearance of an inland sea, and such names as island, port, lighthouse, &c., are said to still survive in places as a relic and indication of the old state of things,4 while a considerable body of water is still to be found in the eastern half of the central depression on the frontier between Persia and Afghanis-tán. This region is now known as Sístán, but in ancient times was called Drangiana or the lake-country, a name which survived much later in its former capital Zarang, and as “Zirih” is still used in connection with its lake.
From April till late in the autumn the sky, save for an occasional thunderstorm among the mountains, is an unclouded azure, in winter a good deal of snow falls, and in spring the thunderstorms are heavy and frequent. The air is, as a rule, remarkably healthy, but on the borders of the deserts the inhabitants have sometimes to live shut up for weeks together to avoid the pestilential blasts.4a
The favoured regions are those that front west and north respectively. They are splendidly wooded and extremely fertile, all the ordinary flowers and fruits of Europe do well, while in the district between the Alburz Mountains and the Caspian, and known as Mázandarán, the climate is semitropical and the vegetation most luxuriant. Here rice, the sugar-cane, the vine, the orange, and the olive flourish.4b In the few watered valleys of the long southern coast the climate is tropical in character. The tamarisk and mimosa are largely represented, and here and there are groves of date-palms.
The immediate neighbourhood of the salt-deserts is the haunt of the wild ass or onager and of the antelope, the slope of the mountain-ranges of the wild sheep or argali, and their summit of the wild goat or ibex. The tracts artificially reclaimed and watered are the favourite home of the sandgrouse, and the highlands of the eagle, the vulture, the falcon, the raven, the crow, and the nightingale—the bulbul of the poets. The acorns of the western slopes attract the wild swine, which in turn tempt the lion from the reed-beds of the Tigris and the cover of its tributaries.5 Swine, too, abound in Mázandarán and afford food for the tiger which flourishes there, the dense undergrowth and vegetation of that region affording it as good shelter as an Indian jungle.5a Here, too, are found deer, buffalo, swan, waterfowl, woodcock, and pheasant. Speaking of the country more generally we may add to this list leopards, wildcats, wolves, bears, hyænas, foxes, snakes, scorpions, vipers, lizards, the partridge, and the lark. The chief domestic animals are the ox, the sheep, especially the fat-tailed variety, the horse, the camel, and the mule.
Írán is a land of sharp contrasts, of intense heat and cold, of sudden and abnormal changes of temperature, of dead level and steep ascent, of splendid fertility hard by lifeless desolation, of irrigation and dust. Its natural characteristics find expression in the ancient cosmogony of its people. We are told that Urmuzd— the Good Principle—created earth as a lovely plain bathed in a mild perpetual radiance, fanned by soft temperate airs, bounteously provided with fresh sweet waters, and clad in a smooth and harmless vegetation. Here the First Man and the First Ox dwelt in peace and happiness. Áhriman—the Evil Principle—broke into this fair scene and all was changed. Gloom minged with light, the seasons' difference began, the seas turned salt, the streams dwindled, the vegetation grew rough and thorny, drought came and dust and desert; mountain-ranges sprang up from the plain, and the man and ox were stricken with disease and died; but from the body of the former sprang the first human pair from whom all the earth was overspread, and from the body of the latter all other harmless, useful, and beautiful animals, while Áhriman in opposition to these created all noisome and hideous insects, reptiles, and creatures sharp of fang or claw.
Let us now turn from the land to the people. For us there is no occasion to discuss questions of race from any very modern standpoint. For us it is rather what ethnical views obtained in ancient Írán and moulded its traditions. As to these there is happily little room for doubt, Darius Hystaspis, the founder of the Persian empire and the greatest of its historic Sháhs, having decided the matter for us. On the rock of Bíhistún he recorded his great achievements in a trilingual inscription, the languages employed being ancient Persian, Babylonian, and Scythian. The obvious explanation of his proceeding is, that he recognised in the population of his vast empire three distinct races of mankind, and, regarding language as distinctive of race, used it to emphasise that great political fact. In thus distinguishing he followed a true philological instinct, and his distinctions still largely obtain at the present day. Each of his three languages represents a great division of human speech. His view, as we shall see, agrees with the traditions and legends of his race, and if some modern Sháh were to restore the empire of Darius, and wished to imitate the example of his great predecessor, he would still have to choose languages typical of the same three divisions. In what follows, therefore, language is made the basis of classification, and the divisions thus classified are commonly called the Indo-European, the Semitic, and the Túránian respectively. It is with peoples of the first division that we are chiefly concerned, and only so far as these came into contact with peoples of the other two divisions are we concerned about the latter.
At the dawn of history we find peoples speaking languages which, theoretically at all events, may be traced back to one primitive tongue, holding similar religious notions and organised politically as independent self-governing tribes, in possession of large geographical areas both in Europe and Asia. They thus fall into two great divisions—an European and an Asiatic—and are generally known as the Indo-European race. The Asiatic branch seems to have occupied in early times the neighbourhoods of Balkh, Harát, Marv, and possibly of Samarkand. It described itself as Aryan or noble, as opposed to all those with whom it came into contact, much as the Greeks divided mankind into Hellenes and Barbaroi. It was organised into three orders or castes—priests, warriors, and husbandmen. Its religion was a frank worship of personified natural forces. Its priests were fire-priests, and fire was an especial object of adoration along with the other beneficent powers of nature—Mitra or Mithra, Yama or Yima, Tritá, Traitána, and others. Opposed to these were the malignant spirits of drought and darkness, as, for instance, Azi or Azhi, also known as Daháka—the biter, the serpent-fiend. Water was ever growing scarcer, and drought or plenty turned in the imagination of a primitive people on the struggle of the good and evil spirits for its possession. The former appeared in the lightning-flash, while the gloomy convolutions of the thunder-cloud suggested the idea that fiends in serpent-form were striving to carry off the precious fluid—the heavenly waters as distinguished from the earthly waters—and hinder it from descending to the help of man. The cloud—the rain-bringer— was perversely regarded as the rain-stealer. The good spirits hastened to the rescue, the lightning-flash clove the cloud, and the demons dropped their booty. The serpent-fiend had to be combated for other reasons too, for his bite brought fever, disease, and death. Accordingly the divine physician appeared side by side with the divine hero, Tritá with Traitána, and became, as we shall see later on, merged into a single personality in Íránian legend. Sacrifices were offered, and the drink-offering of the juice of the Soma or Homa plant was poured forth. The plant is usually identified as being the Asclepias acida or Sarcostemma viminale.8 The Aryans also worshipped the spirits of their ancestors, and were believers in what is called sympathetic magic. They thought that injury done to anything in the remotest way connected with their own persons would affect themselves injuriously. Even the knowledge of their name might be turned to their hurt, and we shall find instances in the poem of children being brought up unnamed to avoid that contingency.
At a period which cannot be put at less than four thousand years ago the Aryans themselves divided, and while a portion descended to the Indus and became the dominant race in India, the rest remained and gradually took possession of all that was habitable in the vast region that consequently became known as the land of the Aryans or Írán. The Aryans thus became separated into two branches—an Eastern and a Western. With the former we are but little concerned; the legendary story of the latter is the theme of the Sháhnáma.
Of these Western Aryans the two most famous peoples have ever been the Medes and Persians.
The Medes, whose modern representatives, if any,
seem to be the Kúrds, appear in ancient times to have
been a loose confederation of kindred tribes broken up
into numerous settlements, each under its local headman
or chief.9
They seem to have had no supreme
political head or king to unite the race under one
central authority. Their common bond, if any, was a
religious one under their priests, the Magi. According
to their own traditions the original seat of the race was
Írán-vej, i.e., “Íránian seed,” and this has been well
identified with the district of Karabagh, the ancient
Arrán, the
The Íránians and the Semites.—In the numerous contemporary records of the Assyrians we find many references to the Íránians. The whole of the western frontier of Írán, from the Medes in the north to the Persians in the south, seems to have been subjected at one point or another to almost constant aggression, at first by mere raids but later on by attempts at permanent conquest, at the hands of the great warrior-monarchs of Nineveh—Shalmaneser II. (B.C. 858–823),10 Samas Rimmon II. (B.C. 823–810),10a Rimmon-nirari III. (B.C. 810–783),10b Tiglath Pilesar III. (B.C. 745–727),10c Sargon (B.C. 722–705),10d Sennacherib (B.C. 705–681),10e Esarhaddon I. (B.C. 681–668),10f and Assurbanipal (B.C. 668–626).10g The attempts at permanent conquest date from the reign of Sargon. The long reign of Assurbanipal falls into two periods, a former of great extension and conquest, and a latter when the tide began to turn and the Assyrian empire, overstrained and exhausted, showed signs of decay. Finally, in the reign of Esarhaddon II., Nineveh fell (B.C. 606), overwhelmed by a confederacy which included the Medes. Probably no empire was ever less lamented by the world at large, for we have the Assyrians' own word for it that their warfare was attended with every circumstance of cruelty and horror. They hold indeed a bad pre-eminence in that respect over all the other nations of antiquity.
With the fall of Nineveh serious Semitic aggression ceased, so far as the Íránians were concerned, till after the Christian era had begun. Arabia was at that epoch extremely prosperous, and carried on a vast caravan traffic in native produce and imports from India with the west and north. When, however, Rome had become recognised as the centre of the world, her merchants soon hit upon a less circuitous and consequently cheaper route. They started a direct traffic between India and the Red Sea, whereby merchandise, instead of being landed in Southern Arabia and thence conveyed northwards by land, was discharged at Arsinoe, Cleopatris (Suez), and other Egyptian ports. As a result, Southern Arabia—the most fertile and populous region of the peninsula—was ruined, and in time, both there and along the lines of the old caravan-routes, only massive remains of cities, canals, dams, and aqueducts were left to witness to a lost prosperity. A vast population was thrown out of employment, and the Arabs began to emigrate northward as early, it would seem, as the first century A.D. The Azdites in this way founded the cities of Hira and Anbar on the Euphrates, and were lords of Damascus till the days of the Khalífa 'Umar. Other tribes from the south settled in the mountains of Ajá and Salmá, to the north of Najd and Al Hajáz. These Northern Arabs were divided in their allegiance between the Roman and Sásánian empires; and their quarrels among themselves, their restlessness and inconstancy, made them thorns in the sides of both, and led to many difficulties. The defeat of Julian by Sapor II. is said to have been largely due to the defection of the Arab allies of the former, while on the other hand the western frontier of Írán was always liable to be overrun by them as far north as and including Ázarbíján. The havoc caused was often great, and the retaliation, on occasions, ferocious.
With the rise of Muhammad the Arabs became a great religious and political power. After his death in A.D. 632 he was succeeded in turn by Abú Bakr and 'Umar. In the course of the ten years of the latter's rule Írán was conquered by his generals after the three great battles of Kádisiyya and Jalúlá in A.D. 637, and Nahávand, A.D. 641. A dynasty of high officials of the Sásánian empire still held out and maintained the ancient faith in the fastnesses of Mázandarán,12 but Írán as a whole was both from a religious and a political point of view submerged. The religious conquest proved to be permanent, but after a time national feeling began to re-assert itself against the political, as the following brief summary of events may serve to show. 'Umar appointed a committee of five to select the next Khalífa after his death. After long debate they chose 'Uthmán, but subsequently repenting of their choice three of the five brought about his assassination after a reign of twelve years, and nominated 'Alí as Khalífa (A.D. 656). 'Uthmán was of the Umayyad family, and its head Mu'áwiya, then governor of Syria, took up arms to avenge him. Neither had any direct claim to the Khiláfat, but 'Alí was the son of Muhammad's uncle Abú Tálib, and had married the prophet's daughter Fátima, known as “the maiden.” Muhammad had said of him: “'Alí is for me, and I am for him; he stands to me in the same rank as Aaron did to Moses; I am the town in which all knowledge is shut up, and he is the gate of it.”13 'Alí came to be regarded as associated in a very special way with the prophet, and was known as his executor or mandatary, and also as the Lion of God, or simply as the Lion. Mu'áwiya, on the other hand, was the son of one of Muhammad's bitterest opponents, and had nothing but his own abilities to recommend him. In the heat of the contest which ensued some of 'Alí's followers in their zeal for him went too far. They not only claimed the Khiláfat for him by divine right, but actually denied that Abú Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthmán had any title to be regarded as legitimate Khalífas at all. This shocked and drew a good many of the faithful into Mu'áwiya's camp, and the two parties became known as Shí'ites (partisans) and Sunnites (orthodox). In the event an extreme Muhammadan sect known as Kharijites (dissenters), which arose at that time, denied the rights of both candidates, advocated the bestowal of the Khiláfat on “the best,” and came to the conclusion that the true course out of the difficulty would be to remove both. 'Alí was accordingly assassinated, but Mu'áwiya escaped and became Khalífa without further dispute.13a The wrongs of 'Alí, however, as many thought them, had taken hold on the popular mind, especially in Írán, and were intensified when his son Husain—the grandson of Muhammad himself—was slain by Mu'áwiya's son and successor Yizid, A.D. 681. The Umayyads, whose chief support lay in Syria, had necessarily to rule from Damascus, and this tended to slacken their hold over their Eastern possessions. Taking advantage of this fact, and exploiting the feeling about 'Alí to their own advantage, the descendants of 'Abbás, one of Muhammad's uncles, gradually undermined the position of the reigning house, till at length in the year A.D. 750, with the assistance of the Persians, they supplanted the Umayyads everywhere except in Spain. The triumph of the 'Abbásids was a half triumph for Persian nationality, and the fact was recognised by the abandonment of Damascus as the seat of empire, and a return to the old state of things that had prevailed under the Sásánians by the building of Baghdád and the transference to it of the seat of government. Another triumph was won when, after the death of Hárúnú'r-Rashíd, his son Mámún, whose mother was a Persian slave, overcame with Persian help his brother Amín, who was supported by Syria. Mámún was the last great 'Abbásid Khalífa (A.D. 813–833). Decline soon followed. In A.D. 861 the Khalífa Mutawakkil was murdered by his own son, and the 'Abbásids became thenceforth insignificant, having little power outside the walls of Baghdád and dependent chiefly on the forbearance of their mayors of the palace, if the expression may be applied to Eastern history, who preferred to veil their own supremacy behind the reverence still inspired by the Khalífas in their religious aspect as Commanders of the Faithful. In the tenth century this office was held by the Dílamids, who claimed descent from the ancient Persian kings and were fervent Shí'ites. They ruled over Western and Southern Írán, posing the while as the Khalífas' most obedient slaves. In the north and east the Sámánides, who claimed to be descended from the famous Íránian hero Bahrám Chubína, but were in reality of Turkman descent, were supreme. The political supremacy of the Arabs in Írán was at an end.
The Íránians and the Greeks and Romans.—The historic strife between Persian and Greek is so familiar to us that it is hard to realise that the only portion of it in Íránian legend that in any way coincides with authentic history is that which deals with the invasion of the East by Alexander the Great; and even this is mostly based not on native but Greek tradition, so modified by Íránian patriotism as to gloss over or explain away the great overthrow of the East by the West. A genuine native tradition dating from those times would be extremely interesting, and it is very disappointing not to have it. Nothing survives of Alexander the Great in native Íránian legend except a conviction that he was one of the great persecutors and destroyers of Zoroastrianism. This will be referred to later on, when we have to touch upon the preservation of Íránian tradition in general. It would seem as if the long predominance of the Roman empire on the stage of history had obliterated the memory of most of the great events of earlier ages and distorted that of the rest. We should expect, however, that at least the Roman empire itself during its greatest period would receive some recognition, especially an event so glorious for the East as the overthrow of Crassus at Carrhae (B.C. 53), but again we are disappointed. The explanation seems to be that during the whole period of the rise and greatness of Rome, Írán was under foreign domination, first Grecian and then Parthian. At all events it is not till a native dynasty rules again in Írán that we begin to find common ground in Íránian and Roman history, and this is not till the third century of the Christian era. Till then Rome obliterated Greece only to be ignored itself in all but the name. Íránian tradition knows of Rúm but of nothing behind it.
The Íránians and the Aryans of India.—In this case the interest for us is chiefly a religious one. From the date (B.C. 250) of the conversion of the Indian king, Asoka of Magadha, to Buddhism that faith began to extend rapidly. Asoka, like all sincere converts, was an enthusiast, and in his reign Buddhism was preached not only in India itself but in Eastern Írán, and even so far west, it is said, as the shores of the Caspian.15 It prospered much and continued to hold its own in Kábulistán till A.D. 850, when a Brahman dynasty replaced the Buddhist. It was probably not much before the eleventh century of the Christian era that Muhammadanism finally triumphed in those regions.16 To the Zoroastrian, however, no less than to the Muhammadan, Buddhism and Brahmanism were alike idolatry, and this view has left, as we shall see, its mark on Íránian legend. The fierce wars carried on against the idolaters of India by the Muhammadans of Eastern Írán at the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh century have also left their mark.
The Íránians and Túránians.—Savage, barbarous, and uncouth, the nations of the North have always been notorious for the disgust and terror with which they have inspired the higher civilisations of the South. The Túránians were little better than the Assyrians in their treatment of vanquished foes, and decidedly worse in aspect. In the most ancient times of which we have any record, the great highway for these nations southward lay between the Caspian and Euxine Seas. They had therefore to cross the barrier of the Caucasus, which is said to be only passable, save by expert Alpine climbers, in three places, one at each end and one near the centre. Of these the most practicable for large bodies of men lay along the flat shores of the Caspian. The Caucasus stops short of that sea, and only one spur of the range running in a north-easterly direction nearly approaches it. Between this spur and the sea, where the passage is narrowest, stands the town of Darband. Here, according to the legend, Sikandar, i.e. Alexander the Great, built a mighty barrier to restrain the incursions of Gog and Magog, i.e. of the Túránians. Such a wall extending across the Pass of Darband was actually built for that purpose by the great Sásánian Sháh Núshírwán, the contemporary of the Emperor Justinian, and those two rulers agreed to share the expense of preventing barbarism from penetrating south of the Caucasus.17 Two centuries later, when the Khazars, a Turkish race from what is now Southern Russia, captured Tiflis and wrought great havoc, the 'Abbásid Khalífa Mansúr erected defensive works and secured the whole region up to the great mountain-barrier.17a Coming down to later times, and regarding the matter from the other side, we may mention that one of Peter the Great's first acts after his accession to the throne was to make sure of Darband.
The first historical invasion by a Túránian race is that of the Kimmerians of Homer and Herodotus, the Gomer of the Bible and the Gimirrá of the Assyrian inscriptions, who appear to have dwelt in early times on the Dniester and the Sea of Azof, whence they were driven by the pressure of kindred races whom the Assyrians called Manda. Traversing the Pass of Dar-band they settled for a time north of the Aras, where undoubtedly they must have come into contact with the Medes. Being still pressed upon from the north, they made an unsuccessful attempt to invade Assyria in B.C. 677, and then turned westward into Asia Minor.17b
In the wake of the Kimmerian invasion came the cause of it—the Sacae or Scythians, who seem to have forced the line of the Aras, to have overrun the territory of the Medes and the kingdom of Ellipi, and to have established as their capital the famous city of Ekbatana, the modern Hamadán, in what has always been known in ancient history as Media Magna. It seems to have been this domination of the Sacae at Ekbatana that has been recorded for us in history as the Empire of the Medes. The confusion appears to have arisen from the similarity between the Assyrian words for Medes and nomads respectively, the former being Madá and the latter Manda, coupled with the fact that the Madá and Manda both formed part of the confederation which, under the leadership of Kastarit, the Kyaxares of the Greeks, overthrew Nineveh.18 The empire of the Manda at Ekbatana—the so-called Median Empire—continued till the middle of the sixth century B.C. It shared the dominion over Western Asia with Babylon and Lydia, and was no doubt the cause of the elaborate defensive works with which Nebuchadnezzar, mindful of the fate of Nineveh, sought to make his capital impregnable: it held the overlordship of Western Írán. In the year B.C. 550, however, Cyrus, king of Elam, rebelled against his overlord, Istuvegu of Ekbatana, the Astyages of the Greeks, and overthrew him in the following year.18a Cyrus then subjugated the Persians, entered Babylon in B.C. 544, conquered Asia Minor and all the tableland of Írán, united its tribes for the first time in history under one government, and became known to later times as Cyrus the Great. He is said to have extended his conquests to the Jaxartes, on the borders of which he erected fortresses to hold the nomad tribes in check,18b and the Greek historians, with the exception of Xenophon, represent him as perishing in a war with the Scythians. The legend of Cyrus and Tomyris, the queen of the Massagetae, told by Herodotus, is well known.18c Cyrus' second successor, Darius Hystaspis, the false Smerdis being left out of the question, also carried the war into the enemy's country, and advanced beyond the Danube in B.C. 513, though not very successfully, to avenge, as Herodotus tells us,18d the Scythian invasions which preceded the fall of the Assyrian Empire.
In the century after the death of Alexander the Great the Parthians, reinforced by another Túránian tribe known as the Dahae, rebelled against the Seleucids (B.C. 250), and became the dominant race in Írán, till a successful revolt (A.D. 226) placed the native Sásánian dynasty on the throne. During their long domination the Parthians in their turn suffered from the incursions of kindred races from the North, in much the same way as the English settlers in Britain suffered from the Danes. The second century before the Christian era was marked by great activity on the part of the Túránians, and the whole border of Írán from the Hindu Kush to the Caspian was overrun by them. Two Parthian monarchs in succession— Phraates II. and Artabanus II.—were defeated and slain, and the Parthian Empire was only saved from overthrow by Mithridates II. Foiled by him the Túránians turned to the East and permanently settled in Eastern Írán, in the region which has ever since been called after one of their peoples, Sacaestan or Sístán, the stead or home of the Sacae (c. B.C. 100).
Another Túránian people, known as the Aláns or Aláni, who first appear, it is said,19 in Chinese annals, were on the Volga in the first century of the Christian era. Pressed upon by the Huns, who had defeated them in a great battle, they overran Media and Armenia, some of them finding their way into the Caucasus, where their descendants, it is said, still exist.19a Thence in A.D. 133, at the invitation of Pharasmanes, king of Iberia, they invaded Ázarbíján and Armenia, ravaged the country, and had to be bought off by Vologeses II., the Parthian monarch of the time.
The Huns, who had been instrumental in precipitating the Aláni on Írán, were themselves in flight before other hordes. A large contingent of them seized and settled upon the oasis of Samarkand or Sughd. Here, improved by long settlement both in aspect and manners,19b they became known as the White Huns; or to the Íránians, who carried on many wars with them, as the Haitálians.
Lastly, in the middle of the sixth century of the Christian era the name of the Turks begins to appear in history. Spreading from Mount Altai, or the Golden Mountain, in Central Asia, they extended themselves over the northern half of the continent, subjugating among other nations the Haitálians. The empire of the Turks only lasted about two centuries,19c but the tribes and nations of which it was composed were spread over the north of Asia from China to the Oxus and the Danube, and under the name of Turkmans have proved a permanent menace to the northern frontiers of Írán.
The 'Abbásids soon learned to avail themselves of the services of Turkman chiefs in the administration of their empire. It was thus that the Sámánids first rose to power under the Khalífa Mámún, only, as we have seen, to make themselves independent under his degenerate successors. About the year A.D. 961 a disputed succession occurred among the Sámánids. The rightful heir in the direct line was a boy only eight years old, and for that reason, as the times were troublous, a party among the nobles declared in favour of his uncle, his father's brother. The matter was referred for settlement to the Sámánid governor of Khurásán—a man of Turkman descent named Alptigín —but before his decision arrived the dispute had been settled and Mansùr had succeeded to the throne. Alptigín had given his decision in favour of the uncle, and being fearful of Mansúr's vengeance he withdrew from Khurásán and carved himself out a small principality at Ghazní. He died in A.D. 969, and after two short reigns the troops elected Subuktigín to be their chief. He was a Turkman, had been brought up in the household of Alptigín, had subsequently acted as his general, and was a man of great ability and courage. He speedily enlarged his dominions and began those raids into India which became so frequent in the days of his more famous son. In the meantime the Sámánid ruler Mansúr had died, and his son, the Amír Nuh II., was driven from his capital at Bukhárá by a Turkman invasion instigated by two of his own nobles, who subsequently, however, were compelled to flee for their lives. They appealed for aid to the Dílamids—the rivals of the Sámánids—and obtained it. On this the Amír Nuh II. himself appealed for help to Subuktigín, who marched to his assistance. A great battle was fought at Harát, and Subuktigín gained a decisive victory. The Amír in his gratitude bestowed on him the title of Násiru'd-Dín, or Defender of the Faith, and on his eldest son Mahmúd, who had greatly distinguished himself, that of Saifu'd-Daula, or Sword of the State, as well as the governorship of Khurásán. This happened in A.D. 994. Three years later Subuktigín died. He left three sons, Mahmúd, Ismá'íl, and Nasr, and appointed Ismá'íl to succeed him. Mahmúd seems to have behaved well, but after vain attempts at conciliation and compromise he was compelled to assert himself against his brother, who was speedily overthrown and ended his days in internment as a state-prisoner. The other brother, Nasr, supported Mahmúd. Shortly afterwards the Sámánid dynasty flickered out after the death of the Amír Nuh II., and in A.D. 999 Mahmúd formally assumed the sovereignty, an event which is duly noted on his coins by the prefix of Amír to his own titles, and the omission of the name of the Sámánid overlord which previously had been retained by the rulers of Ghazní.21 Mahmúd was then twenty-eight years old. His career as a great conqueror and religious fanatic is well known. His domination extended from the Punjáb to the Tigris, and from Bukhárá to the Indian Ocean. He has, however, another claim upon our memories. His name was to become for ever associated with that of the poet of the Sháhnáma who had despaired in those troublous times of obtaining any adequate royal patronage for his long formed design of moulding into song the epic history of his land and people. It was a moment of high hopes for many, for the young and ambitious prince, for the ambitious but no longer youthful poet, and for all who either by birth or adoption had the welfare of Írán at heart. The Arab yoke had been shaken off, Persian was reviving in the literature, old Íránian names were being resumed, and there seemed the fairest prospects for the establishment of a third Persian empire with Mahmúd for its first Sháh. It is true that religious differences remained. Half Írán was Shí'ite and the other half Sunnite,22 but save for that it seemed a stroke of fair fortune that made the great king and the great poet contemporaries.
THE most trustworthy materials for the life of Firdausí are to be found in his own personal references, there being probably no poem of considerable length in which the writer keeps himself so much in evidence as Firdausí does in the Sháhnáma. Next in authority to his own statements we must place the account given of him by Nizámí-i-'Arúdí of Samarkand in his work entitled “Chahár Makála,” i.e. “Four Discourses.” 23 They are on Secretaries, Poets, Astrologers, and Physicians respectively, and consist chiefly of anecdotes. One of these, in the “Discourse on Poets,” gives the valuable account of Firdausí. Unfortunately it throws doubt on the authenticity of the extant version of one of his compositions—the Satire on Sultán Mahmúd, only a few lines of which, if Nizámí is to be believed, can be regarded as Firdausí's own. They suffice, however, to indicate one good reason for the poet's difference with Mahmúd and the general line that he took in his literary revenge, though that Sul-tán, it is pretty evident, never even heard that the poet had written the Satire at all! In addition to the above-mentioned sources of information there are two formal biographies of the poet. One, which dates about A.D. 1425, was compiled by order of Baisinghar Khán, the grandson of Tímúr the Lame, and is prefixed to the former's edition of the text of the Sháhnáma. It is apparently based on an older metrical life of which it preserves some extracts, and is itself the basis of most of the biographical notices of the poet, including that in the Encyclopœdia Britannica. The other, which dates about A.D. 1486, is in Daulat Sháh's “Lives of the Poets,” and is preferred by the writer of the article “Ferdoucy” in the Biographie Universelle. Both are used by Mohl in the preface to his edition of the text and translation of the Sháhnáma, and both are full of mythical details.
Let us first confine ourselves to the statements in the poet's undoubted writings and to legitimate deductions therefrom. He calls himself Abú 'l Kásim, and we gather that he was born about A.D. 941. We arrive at this in the following way. In the whole Sháhnáma there is only one definite date—that on which he finished the poem. This, mixing up the Muhammadan era with the Zoroastrian calendar, he tells us he did on the day of Ard in the month of Sapandármad of the year 400 of the Hijra. This particular year, for the Muhammadan years are lunar and vary accordingly, began on August 25th, A.D. 1009, and ended on the 14th day of that month in the year following. Therefore Firdausí finished the Sháhnáma on February 25th, A.D. 1010. He gives his one date in the concluding lines of the poem, where he also says:—
When one and seventy years had passed me by
The heavens bowed down before my poetry.24
This we may fairly interpret as meaning that he finished his work when he was seventy-one years old, i.e. about sixty-nine, as we reckon, since thirty-four Muhammadan years go to about thirty-three of ours.
The poet was a Muhammadan of the Shí'ite sect. This is clear from his reference to 'Alí in his Prelude. 24a
Moreover, he was not a strict Muhammadan in the matter of wine-drinking:—
The time to quaff delicious wine is now,
For musky scents breathe from the mountain-brow,
The air resoundeth and earth travaileth,
And blest is he whose heart drink gladdeneth,
He that hath wine and money, bread and sweets,
And can behead a sheep to make him meats.
These have not I. Who hath them well is he.
Oh! pity one that is in poverty!24b
And again:—
Bring tulip-tinted wine, O Háshimí!
From jars that never need replenishing.
Why seek I who am deaf at sixty-three
The world's grace and observance?24c
He soon after has a fit of repentance:—
Old man whose years amount to sixty-three!
Shall wine be still the burden of thy lay?
Without a warning life may end with thee;
Think of repentance then, seek wisdom's way.
May God approve this slave. May he attain
In wisdom riches and in singing gain.24d
He owned or occupied land; at least the following passages suggest that conclusion:—
A cloud hath risen and the moon's obscured,
From that dark cloud a shower of milk is poured,
No river plain or upland can I spy,
The raven's plumes are lost against the sky,
In one unceasing stream egg-apples fall:
What is high heaven's purpose in it all?
No fire-wood salted meat or barley-grain
Are left me, naught till harvest come again!
Amid this gloom, this day of tax and fear,
When earth with snow is like an ivory sphere,
All mine affairs in overthrow will end
Unless my hand is grasped by some good friend.24e
And again:—
The hail this year like death on me hath come
Though death itself were better than the hail,
And heaven's lofty far extending dome
Hath caused my fuel sheep and wheat to fail.26
In some verses, complaining of the advance of old age, he alludes to a calamity that befell him when he was fifty-eight, or it may be that an escape from drowning, which he seems to have had about that time, had a sobering effect upon him. This accident will be referred to in another connection later on. He says:—
Since I took up the cup of fifty-eight
The bier and grave, naught else, I contemplate.
Ah! for my sword-like speech when I was thirty,
Those luscious days, musk-scented, roseate!26a
At the age of sixty-five he lost his son:—
At sixty-five 'tis ill to catch at pelf.
Oh! let me read that lesson to myself
And muse upon the passing of my son.
My turn it was to go yet he hath gone.
…
Seven years and thirty o'er the youth had sped
When he distasted of the world and fled.
…
He hurried off alone. I stayed to see
The outcome of my labours.26b
In the year following his son's death he speaks of himself as being much broken:—
While three score years and five were passing by,
Like Spring-winds o'er the desert, poverty
And toil were mine; next year like one bemused
I leaned upon a staff, my hands refused
The rein, my checks grew moon-like pale, my beard
Lost its black hue and camphor-like appeared,
Mine upright stature bent as age came on
And all the lustre of mine eyes was gone.27
He never speaks of himself as having any profession or official position, but if we may hazard a conjecture it is that he or his son or both were educated for the office of scribe. He puts the following glorification of that profession into the mouth of Búzurjmihr, the famous chief minister of the still more famous Sháh Núshírwán:27a —
Teach to thy son the business of the scribe
That he may be as life to thee and thine,
And, as thou wouldest have thy toils bear fruit,
Grudge not instructors to him, for this art
Will bring a youth before the throne and make
The undeserving fortune's favourite.
Of all professions 'tis the most esteemed,
Exalting even those of lowly birth.
A ready scribe who is a man of rede
Is bound to sit e'en in the royal presence
And, if he be a man of diligence,
Will have uncounted treasure from the Sháh,
While if endowed with fluency and style
He will be studious to improve himself,
Use his endeavours to be more concise
And put his matter more attractively.
The scribe hath need to be a man of wisdom,
Of much endurance and good memory,
A man of tact, accustomed to Court-ways,
A holy man whose tongue is mute for evil,
A man of knowledge, patience, truthfulness,
A man right trusty pious and well-favoured.
If thus endowed he cometh to the Sháh
He cannot choose but sit before the throne.27b
However this may be, from the time when he became his own master he appears to have devoted himself to poetry. Referring to the completion of the Sháhnáma he says:—
My life from youth to eld hath run its course
In hearing other and mine own discourse.28
We have already had an allusion to his “sword-like speech” when he was thirty, and we know that between the ages of thirty-five and sixty-nine he was occupied on the Sháhnáma. He tells us in a passage that will be quoted later on that he spent thirty-five years on that poem, i.e. about thirty-four years as we reckon. The prose materials for this, he informs us, already had been embodied in book-form,28a and the idea of turning them into verse had suggested itself to the poet Dakíkí, a young man of brilliant parts but of vicious habits, who was murdered by the hand of one of his own slaves.28b Dakíkí had only just begun his great task when he was cut off, but Firdausí admits his priority:—
Although he only rhymed the veriest mite—
One thousand couplets full of feast and fight—
He was my pioneer and he alone
In that he set the Sháhs upon the throne.
From nobles honour and emolument
Had he; his trouble was his own ill bent.
To sing the praises of the kings was his
And crown the princes with his eulogies.28c
Dakíkí seems to have died about A.D. 976, for Firdausí took up the work and it employed him for the next thirty-four years as we reckon. At first he found himself hampered through lack of the necessary materials. What those were will be explained later on in the present chapter. He made countless inquiries and began to despair, fearing that like Dakíkí he should not live to complete his undertaking. He also suffered from lack of patronage and encouragement. The times were troublous and men's minds were otherwise occupied. At length both the needful materials and the patron were vouchsafed him. The former were obtained for him by a friend and fellow-townsman. 29 The latter he found somewhat later in the person of Abú Mansúr bin Muhammad, probably a local magnate, who warmly encouraged him and treated him with the greatest kindness and generosity. This, we may venture to assume, was one of the happiest epochs in the poet's life. He was in the first flush of a great and enduring enthusiasm; the means of gratifying it were in his possession; he held the field, and his material future seemed assured: his noble, rich, and generous patron would see to that. Alas! that patron died—murdered like Dakíkí, but by whom and in what circumstances we know not. The poet was overwhelmed for a time, but he persevered and kept in mind his patron's counsel that the Book of Kings (Sháhnáma) when completed should be dedicated to kings.29a In course of time the poet found other patrons, notably one Ahmad ibn Muhammad of Chálandshán, to whom in A.D. 999 he dedicated a complete Sháhnáma. Firdausí was staying with Ahmad when he had the escape from drowning already referred to, and he seems to have been rescued either by Ahmad himself or by Ahmad's son. This passage is not in our printed texts.29b The poet, however, had never forgotten the advice of his former patron, the beloved Abú Mansúr, and in this same year his opportunity came. The last king of the Sámánid dynasty died and Mahmúd became supreme in Eastern Írán. Henceforth it was to Mahmúd that the poet looked for patronage, and he appears to have left no stone unturned to gain it. If adulation could have achieved his end he ought to have succeeded. The reader will find a specimen in the present volume.30 Elsewhere in another elaborate panegyric he says:—
God bless the Sháh, the pride of crown and throne
And signet-ring, bless him whose treasuries groan
With his munificence what while the fame
Of majesty is heightened by his name.
…
O'er all the world one carpet hath been placed—
His token nevermore to be effaced—
And on it are a cushion and a seat
For Fazl, son of Ahmad, a man replete
With justice, prudence, rede, and godly fear;
No Sháh before had such a minister.
In his hands is the peace of all the state
For he is good and chief of all the great,
Frank-spoken, with clean hands and single heart;
To serve God and his sovereign is his part.
With this wise upright minister for friend
My far-extending labour reached its end.
I framed this story of the days of yore,
Selected from the book of men of lore,
That it in mine old age might yield me fruit,
Give me a crown dínárs and high repute,
But saw no bounteous worldlord; there was none
Who added to the lustre of the throne.
I waited for a patron patiently—
One whose munificence required no key.
…
When I was fifty-eight, and when in truth
I still felt young though I had lost my youth,
A proclamation reached mine ears at last
Whereat care aged and all my troubles pass'd.
It ran:—“Ye men of name who long to find
Some trace of Farídún still left behind!
See bright-souled Farídún alive again
With earth and time for bondslaves. He hath ta'en
The world by justice and by largessings,
And is exalted o'er all other kings.
Bright are the records of his earlier day,
And may he flourish, root and fruit, for aye.”
Now since that proclamation reached mine ear
I wish not any other sound to hear;
In his name have I fashioned this my lay,
And may his end be universal sway.31
The reader will note that both in § 12 of the Prelude and in the passage just quoted Firdausí couples Mahmúd and his minister in eulogy. As the Prelude is retrospective, we may venture to assume who that minister was, because as it was written last the reference if inopportune would not have been inserted. There can hardly be a doubt that in both passages the same minister is referred to—Fazl, son of Ahmad.
The passage from which the above extracts are taken is a very important one. It seems to have been penned a few years before the completion of the Sháhnáma, for the poet was over sixty-five at the time. The extracts suggest that he had lately received some definite encouragement, some promise of patronage or reward from Mahmúd or his minister or both, whereupon he wrote this panegyric and prefixed it to the section that he had been engaged on or had taken in hand when the announcement of Mahmúd's accession first reached him. If Mahmúd, who was of Turkman descent, had strong racial proclivities, the section in point hardly seems to be well chosen, for it tells of the final overthrow of Afrásiyáb, the great protagonist of the Turkman race, at the hands of the Íránian Sháh Kai Khusrau. Perhaps Mahmúd had become more Íránian than the Íránians. Such cases are not unknown in history. At all events we know that his minister Fazl, son of Ahmad, or to give him his full title Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl bin Ahmad, had Íránian leanings, for he changed the official language for state documents from Arabic to Persian. After his fall his successor, Ahmad Hasan Maimandí, returned to the old arrangement.32 At the time when the poet wrote the above passage Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl must have been at the height of his power, say about A.D. 1006. We are told on the authority of Al 'Utbí that he was one of the most celebrated of book-students, and Al 'Utbí, who was Mahmúd's secretary, ought to have known.32a It is very hard to resist the inference that Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl had given the poet encouragement, and that the latter looked to him to secure a fitting reception by Mahmúd of the poem when finished. The poet's idea seems to have been that the Sháhnáma was to be regarded as Mahmúd's memorial, while the profits of his great work were to be devoted to some special object which was to be regarded as his own memorial:—
Of all the things that earn our monarch's praise,
The things of chiefest profit in his days,
This will best serve to keep his memory rife
And live as part and parcel of his life,
And I am hoping to live too till I
Receive his gold that when I come to die
I too may leave my monument with things
Drawn from the treasury of the king of kings.32b
If the poet put his faith in Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl he was doomed to disappointment. In the meantime we have a lamentation over hopes deferred, royal neglect which may have been intentional or merely unwitting, and active opposition:—
Six times ten thousand couplets there will be
Well ordered—banishers of misery.
For thrice a thousand couplets one may look
In vain as yet in any Persian book,
And if thou cancellest each faulty strain
In sooth five hundred scarcely will remain.
That one—a bounteous king and of such worth
And lustre mid the monarchs of the earth—
Should disregard these histories is due
To slanderers and mine ill fortune too.
They have maligned my work, my marketing
Is spoiled through lack of favour with the king,
But when the royal warrior shall read
My pleasant histories with all good heed
I shall be gladdened by his treasures here,
And may no foeman's ill approach him near.
My book may then recall me to his mind
And I the fruitage of my labours find.
Be his the crown and throne while time shall run,
And may his destiny outshine the sun.33
At another time he is plunged in despair:—
The dear delights of earth, the sovereign sway,
What boot they? Soon thy rule will pass away.
Blest is the pious mendicant and wise,
Whose ears oft feel the world's rough pleasantries,
For when he passeth he will leave behind
A good name and a good conclusion find.
His portion is in Heaven and in God's sight
He will have honour. Such is not my plight
Who am in wretched case, calamitous,
With all that I possess sent Hellward thus
Beyond recall! No hope in Heaven I see,
My hand is void, both worlds have ruined me!33a
In moments of disappointment, too, and at periods probably years apart, the poet gives vent to his feelings not only in respect to his own times but even to Mahmúd himself. The expression of them is put into the mouths of some of his characters, but the prophecies are of the sound type made after the event and evidently the poet's own handiwork:—
A time is coming when the world will have
A king that is devoid of understanding,
A king whose gloomy spirit will work woe;
The world will darken 'neath his tyranny
And good will ne'er be found among his treasures.
He will be ever gathering fresh hosts
To win his crown new fame but in the end
This monarch and his hosts will pass away,
And there will be a change of dynasty.34
And again:—
The warrior will despise the husbandman,
High birth and dignity will bear no fruit;
Then men will rob each other, none will know
A blessing from a curse, and secret dealing
Prevail o'er open, while the hearts of men
Will turn to flint, sire will be foe to son
And son will scheme 'gainst sire; a worthless slave
Will be the Sháh, high birth and majesty
Will count for nothing; no one will be loyal.
There will be tyranny of soul and tongue;
A mongrel race—Íránian, Turkman, Arab—
Will come to be and talk in gibberish.34a
These passages, in Professor Nöldeke's opinion,34b clearly refer to Mahmúd and to the circumstances of the poet's own time. The latter occurs nearly at the end of the poem, and is put into the mouth of the commander of the Persian host just before the fatal battle of Kádisiyya, A.D. 637.
At length the great work is finished, but the poet's mood is still one of despondence:—
When five and sixty years had passed me by
I viewed my work with more anxiety,
But as my yearning to achieve it grew
My fortune's star receded from my view.
Great men and learnéd Persians had for me
My work all copied out gratuitously
While I sat looking on, and thou hadst said
That I was toiling for my daily bread.
Naught but their praises had I for my part
And, while they praised, I had a broken heart.
The mouths of their old money-bags were tied,
Whereat mine ardent heart was mortified.
'Alí Dílam and 'bú Dulaf these two
Helped me to bear mine undertaking thro';
These ardent souls, my fellow townsmen, they
Were kind and sped my work in every way.
Ha'íy son of Kutíb, a Persian he,
Would not take from me and withhold my fee,
But furnished gold and silver, clothes and meat;
From him I got incitement, wings and feet.
Taxation, root and branch, I know not, I
Loll on my quilt at ease. When seventy
And one years of my life had passed me by
The heavens bowed down before my poetry.
For five and thirty years I bore much pain
Here in this Wayside Inn in hope of gain,
But all the five and thirty years thus past
Naught helped; men gave my travail to the blast,
And my hopes too have gone for evermore
Now that mine age hath almost reached fourscore.
…
For ever lusty be Mahmúd the king,
His heart still glad, his head still flourishing.
Him both in public and in private I
Have praised so that my words will never die.
Of praises from the great I had my store,
The praises that I give to him are more.
For ever may he live, this prudent king,
And see his undertakings prospering.
I have bequeathed as his memorial
This book, six times ten thousand lines in all.35
There are other references by the poet to his work and his hopes concerning it, but it is believed that the most important passages have now been set forth. If then we had no other sources of information than these, what should we gather from them? That the poet in the prime of life succeeded to the work and materials of Dakíkí, and laboured at his task for many years under various patrons but not receiving such recognition as in his own opinion his deserts merited; that he thought he saw his opportunity in the accession of Mahmûd and did his best to avail himself of it; that he received some encouragement if not from the Sultán himself at least from Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl, the chief minister, and achieved his task early in A.D. 1010; that for some years before that date there had been opposition to him at Court, his work vilified and his character misrepresented; that these intrigues ultimately prevailed, and that he never received the reward for his labours that a perhaps somewhat too fervid temperament had led him to hope for or expect; that for years after the completion of the poem he still hoped on, was nearly eighty when he finally despaired, but to the last continued to praise Mahmúd.
Now if we seek to look further into the causes of Firdausí's disappointment we have at hand a plausible and even probable explanation, but one for which we have, at present at all events, no direct evidence. Just about the time when the Sháhnáma was completed Mahmúd's chief minister, Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl, fell into disgrace. He had once been in the service of the Sámánids, but when Mahmúd became governor of Khurásán in A.D. 994, his father, Subuktagín, applied to the Sámánid prince, Nuh bin Mansúr, for the services of Abú'l 'Abbás on behalf of his son. Accordingly he became the steward of Mahmúd's household at Níshápúr, and, after Mahmúd's accession, chief minister. He is said to have made use of his position to enrich himself, and his administration is stated to have been so oppressive that Khurásán was devastated and depopulated, but this of course need not be taken too literally. The Sultán, however, became concerned with regard to the diminution of the levies and the falling off in the revenue, and remonstrated with Abú'l 'Abbás, who threatened to resign. In A.D. 1011, after long negotiations, the Sultán, enraged at his conduct, imposed a fine of 100,000 dínárs upon him, and, as he still deferred payment, had him imprisoned and put to the torture. His enemies availed themselves of his disgrace, and of the Sultán's displeasure and absence on one of his numerous campaigns, to have the fallen minister done to death in A.D. 1013.37
The suggestion then is that the poet lost his chance owing to the troubles in which the minister became involved just about the time when the Sháhnáma would be ready for presentation to Mahmúd; and when we picture to ourselves the remorseless intrigues of an Oriental court—intrigues sticking at no atrocity and shrinking from no meanness—we can well imagine that if the unfortunate minister really had taken an interest in the poet's work, there would not be wanting those who would only be too willing out of mere spite to strike at the patron through the poet.
However this may be, the latter, indignant at the treatment he had undergone, or smarting under the sense of unmerited neglect, set about writing a Satire on Sultán Mahmúd, of which, according to Nizámí-i-Arúdí, only the following five couplets survived in his days. They run as follows:—
“Yon prater hath grown old,” they flung at me,
“In love toward the Prophet and 'Alí.”
That love, if I shall speak of it, implies
Five score Mahmúds for me to patronise.
The slave-girl's brat is but a worthless thing
Although its father came to be a king.
Had e'er the Sháh a turn for goodness shown
He would have seated me upon the throne.
Because his kindred is of mean estate
He cannot bear to hear about the great.
In the extant version of the Satire that we follow,37a which consists of 102 couplets, the above couplets appear not in this order but separately as the 11th, 27th, 83rd, 72nd, and 76th respectively, with some differences of reading. Here they read rather disconnectedly, but have an appropriate context in the extant version of the Satire. We learn from them that one of the charges brought against the poet was that he was a heretic of the sect of the Shí'ites, and this may have weighed with the orthodox Mahmúd. The poet for his part develops the old taunt of the slave who became a Sháh. If now we turn to the extant version of the Satire, and accept it as genuine in spite of what Nizámí says, we get additional and interesting information. The poet speaks of himself as Firdausí of Tús. Tús was formerly a city of much importance in Khurásán, and its ruins are still to be seen some seventeen miles N.N.W. of Mashad. He tells us that he spent thirty years over the Sháhnáma, that it was presented to Mahmúd, who had promised a worthy but gave him a very inadequate reward— little more than one-seventh of what he expected— and that he publicly gave away the whole of it to a street sherbet-seller in payment for a drink. He also informs us that Mahmúd threatened to have him trampled to death by elephants, and he ends by cursing the Sultán.
We now pass on to what Nizámí has to tell us more than a hundred years after the death of the poet.
Abú'l Kásim Firdausí was one of the landed proprietors of Tús. He was a native of a village called Bazh, which formed part of one of the quarters, districts, or suburbs of the city. He was a man of importance and of independent means, which were derived from the income of his land. He had one daughter, and the sole object of his labours on the Sháhnáma was to obtain the funds necessary to provide her with a dowry. When he had completed the work it was transcribed by 'Alí Dílam and recited by Abú Dulaf. He was much in favour with Ha'íy, son of Kutíba, the governor of the city, who treated him with all consideration in the matter of taxation.
'Alí Dílam transcribed the Sháhnáma in seven volumes, and Firdausí set off for Ghazní with Abú Dulaf. Ahmad Hasan Maimandí, Mahmúd's chief minister, befriended him, and the poem was duly presented to the Sultán, who accepted it. The minister, however, had enemies, who pointed out that Firdausí was a heretic, as some of the verses in his Prelude to the Sháhnáma showed,39 and the result was that the poet got much less than he expected. He went to the bath in deep chagrin, and on coming out divided the sum that he had received between the bath-man and a sherbet-seller of whom he had bought a drink. Then fearing the wrath of Mahmúd he fled to Harát, where he lay hidden for six months. Mahmúd sent messengers after him to Tús, but not finding him they turned back, on which the poet ventured to go there himself, taking the Sháhnáma with him.39a Thence he journeyed on to Tabaristán, whose ruler treated him kindly. There Firdausí wrote his Satire on Mahmúd, read it to the chief, and offered to dedicate the Sháhnáma to him instead of to the Sultán. The chief of Tabaristán, however, was himself one of Mahmúd's vassals, and he persuaded the poet to let the dedication stand, and bought the Satire of him for one hundred thousand drachms—a thousand for each couplet. He then destroyed it, and Firdausí himself destroyed his own rough copy, only five verses remaining extant—the five already given. We here append our version of the Satire. Assuming that it is in essentials the poet's handiwork the reader probably will agree with the prudent chief of Tabaristán in his opinion that the sooner it was suppressed the better.
Ho! Sháh Mahmúd who hast as victor trod
The climes! if man thou fearest not fear God,
For there were many Sháhs ere thou hadst birth
Who all were crownéd monarchs of the earth
And all of them pre-eminent o'er thee
In treasure, host, throne, crown, and dignity.
They did no act that was not good and right,
Went not about to swindle and to spite,
Dealt with their subjects justly and were naught
If not God's worshippers. They only sought
From time an honoured name and thus to gain
An honoured end; but all good folk disdain
Sháhs that are bound in filthy lucre's chain.
What though the kingship of the world is thine,
Dost ask what boot these whirling words of mine?
Thou hast not seen my heart in its fierce mood,
Thou reck'st not of my sword a-drip with blood
But term'st me faithless, heretic! I am
A lion, and thou callest me a ram!
“Yon ribald hath grown old,” men flung at me,
“In love toward the Prophet and 'Alí.”
But is there, tell me this, one viler yet
Than he whose heart against 'Alí is set?
These two I serve till Resurrection-morn
E'en if the Sháh should have my body torn
Asunder. I will love these two kings though
The Sháh's sword be above, my head below.
I serve the Prophet's slaves, the dust revere
Upon His mandatary's40 foot. No fear
Have I for all thy threats:—“Thou shalt be brayed??
By elephants and have thy body made
A river Nile,” for mine enlightened mind
Place for the love of these two souls shall find
Within my heart. What said the inspired Lord
Of bidding and forbidding—Heaven's own word?
“I am the City of the Doctrine, he
That is the gateway to it is 'Alí.”
I witness that His heart is in that word
As though, as thou may'st say, His voice I heard.
If thou hast mind and wit and rede to hand
By Prophet and 'Alí take up thy stand.
If ill result to thee mine is the breach;
Thus is it, and I practise what I preach.
C. 64Thus have I done from birth, thus will I die;
The dust upon the Lion's41 foot am I.
What others say can make no difference
To me; I never speak but in this sense,
And if the Sháh adopt another strain
His wisdom weigheth not one barley-grain.
When God shall set the Prophet and 'Alí
On royal thrones I, if my poetry
Came from my love to them, shall in the skies
Have five-score like Mahmúd to patronise.
While earth remaineth it will have its lords,
And all that wear the crown shall hear these words:—
“Firdausí—I of Tús—your friend, disclaim
Mahmúd as patron. I wrote in the name
Of the Prophet and 'Alí; for their sake I
Have pierced so many gems of fantasy.”
So long as there was no Firdausí here
The fortune of this world of ours was sere,
Yet on this tale of mine thou wouldst not look
Misled by one who vilified my book,
But may all those that vilified my strain
Expect revolving heaven's help in vain.
These stories of the sovereigns of old
Had I in mine own charming language told,
And when my years had almost reached fourscore
My hopes were scattered to the wind. I bore
Here in this Wayside Inn the toil so long
Because I hoped for treasure through my song
Of sixty thousand noble couplets spent
On warlike topics, and their argument
The lasso, scimitar, artillery,
The battle-axe, the falchion brandished high,
The casque, the mail, the charger's armature,
The wilderness, the ocean, stream and shore,
Wolf, dragon, elephant, and crocodile,
Pard, lion, and 'Afrít, the cunning wile
Of Ghúl, the sorcery of dívs whose cries
Reached heaven, the heroes famed for enterprise
Upon the day of battle (these I sing),
The heroes combating and glorying,
Men too of no mean rank or name obscure
But such as Salm Afrásiyáb and Túr,
Sháh Farídún and Kai Kubád and fell
Zahhák the tyrant and the infidel,
Garshásp and Sám whom Narímán the bold
Begot—world-paladins of mighty mould—
Húshang and Tahmúras the Dív that bound,
With Minúchihr, Jamshíd that Sháh renowned,
Káús and Kai Khusrau with crown upon
His head, and Rustam, and that famous one
Of brazen form,42 Gúdarz and his delight—
His eighty sons, those Lions of the fight
And horsemen of the plain—great Sháh Luhrásp,
Zarír the captain of the host, Gushtásp,
Jámásp who shone among the host on high
More brightly than the sun doth in the sky,
Dárá son of Dáráb, Bahman, the great
Sikandar—chief of all that ruled the state—
C. 65Withal too Sháh Ardshír, Shápúr his son,
Bahrám and Núshírwán the virtuous one.
Such is the famous and exalted throng
That I have made the subject of my song,
All dead for ages but my poetry
Hath caused their names to live again, for I
Have raised these dead, as Jesus did, and made
Their names live, one and all, and I have laid
A servitude upon myself for thee,
O king! to keep thy name in memory.
The homes that are the dwellings of to-day
Will sink 'neath shower and sunshine to decay,
But storm and rain shall never mar what I
Have built—the palace of my poetry.
This story shall be read by every one
Possessed of wisdom while the ages run;
But that was not thy promised recompense,
Nor did I hope reward in such a sense.
A slanderer (my curse upon his head!)
Extracted evil out of what I said
For good, destroyed my credit with the king
And made my glowing coal a frigid thing.
If thou hadst been a judge of honest ways,
And hadst bestowed a thought upon my lays,
Thou wouldst have said that I have paid my dues—
The talent that was given me to use—
In full. My words have made the world to grow
Like Paradise. Before me none could sow
The seed of words. Unnumbered folk no doubt
Flung them in countless multitudes about,
But, though they were so many, up to now
No one hath ever mentioned them, I trow.
For thirty years exceeding toil I bore
And made the Persians live in Persian lore.
Unless the worldlord had close-fisted grown
I should have had a seat upon the throne;
He would have placed me there, but common sense
Hath never been the monarch's excellence.
Had he himself been royal by descent
He would have heeded royal precedent,
For, had his sire been Sháh, he would ere now
Have set a crown of gold upon my brow,
Or had his mother been a lady I
Had stood in gold and silver coin knee-high;
But since his kindred are of mean estate
He cannot bear to hear about the great.
The bounty of this Sháh of high degree
Hath altered nine times nine to four times three!43 The travail of this Book of Kings I bore
For thirty years that from his treasury's store
The Sháh might recompense me, set me free
From worldly needs and give me high degree
Among my peers. He oped his treasury's door
And gave a sherbet-seller's43a fee, not more,
On whom I spent it in the public way—
A fit recipient of such royal pay!
C. 66A king devoid of honour, sense of right,
And faith as this is, is not worth a mite.
The slave-girl's brat is but a worthless thing
Although it may be fathered by a king.
To raise the vile that good from them may flow
Is but to lose our thread's end when we sew
Or put a viper in our pouch to grow.
If thou shalt plant a tree of nauseous fruit
In Paradise itself and drench the root,
When moisture is required, from Heaven's own rill
Of purest honey, the old nature still
Will show itself at last; thou wilt procure
Fruit no less nauseous than the fruit before.
If by perfumers' stalls thy steps are bent
Thy clothing will catch somewhat of the scent,
And if thou visitest a charcoal Jack
Thou wilt get naught from him that is not black.
That miscreants should do ill is no strange case;
Hope nothing then from one whose birth is base,
For none can furbish off the gloom of night,
And washing will not make an Ethiop white.
To look for good from an ill stock to rise
Is but to throw the dust in one's own eyes.
The worldlord, if an honoured name he bore,
Would have esteemed right dear this branch of lore
And listened to such various tales as these
Of ancient ways and royal usages,
Would not have met my wishes with disdain
Or let the labour of my life be vain.
I have a purpose in these lofty rhymes—
The Sháh perchance will be advised betimes,
Will recognise what words are, will pay heed
To this his hoary old adviser's rede,
Do to no other poets wrong henceforth
But hold his reputation something worth,
For men will quote till Resurrection-morn
The injured poet's recompense of scorn.
A suppliant at the Court of God most high
I shall throw dust upon my head and cry:—
“Lord, cause Thy faithful servant's heart to dwell
In light, and burn this miscreant's soul in Hell.”
Before resuming our summary of Nizámí's account we should mention that later on the indomitable poet wrote his second great poem, “Yúsuf and Zulíkha.” This work is still extant in MS., and a printed edition is understood to be in preparation. He tells us in his Introduction that he wrote it at the suggestion of a high official of the Dílamids with a view of dedicating it to the ruling Dílamid prince. The poet seems to have quitted Tabaristán, where a prolonged stay might have been not without risk both to himself and to his friendly entertainer, and to have journeyed further to the west, where beyond the reach of Mahmúd's wrath (if Mahmúd really concerned himself about the matter at all) he wrote the abovementioned work.45 Ultimately he returned to his native city of Tús, and we may conclude this account of the calamity of an author by summarising the rest of what Nizámí has to tell us. He no doubt gives us, as he professes to do, the received tradition of the time. Sultán Mahmúd, induced by the representations of his chief minister (Hasan Maimandí?) ultimately repented of his treatment of the poet. He accordingly gave directions that sixty thousand dínárs' worth of indigo should be carried to Firdausí at Tús with a suitable apology. This was done and the indigo arrived safely, but as the caravan that bore it entered by one gate the poet's corpse was being borne out to burial by another, outside which was a garden belonging to him, and there he was interred, because in the orthodox view of a local preacher he was a heretic, and therefore must not be suffered to lie in the Musulmán Cemetery. He left a daughter —a high-spirited lady—who refused to accept the Sultán's gift, and the money was therefore spent in repairing the hostelry of Cháha, on the road between Marv and Níshápúr. The poet seems to have died A.D. 1020–1021, at the age of about eighty. Nizámí visited his tomb, A.D. 1116–1117.
It has not seemed necessary to the present writer to enter more fully into the interesting subject of the poet's biography. The reader will find ampler details in Professor Nöldeke's invaluable “Iranische National-epos,” and in Professor Browne's most useful translation of Nizámí, both of which works are obtainable in a convenient form. It is not worth while to reproduce here the accounts of later biographers—those mentioned at the beginning of the present chapter—and of other writers. Some of their anecdotes will, however, be inserted in appropriate places in the course of this translation. A word of warning should be added. The present writer has confined himself, except where otherwise stated, to the figures given, as to the poet's age, &c., in the two texts from which our translation of the Sháhnáma has been made. They seem to be generally consistent, but other MSS. give other figures, and if their readings are adopted other conclusions naturally follow.
The present writer, as far as he is concerned, would gladly terminate the history of the writing and reception of the Sháhnáma at the point where the poet himself left it in concluding that work; at all events pains has been taken to distinguish Firdausí's own account from that given by others. It only remains to add that late in life when writing “Yúsuf and Zulíkha” he affected to condemn his greatest achievement as a pack of idle tales. Old age, disappointment, and other circumstances may well have contributed to warp his judgment, but we cannot doubt that in his heart of hearts he was as conscious of what constituted his best title to fame as when he penned the concluding words of the Sháhnáma:—
I shall live on, the seed of words have I
Flung broad-cast, and henceforth I shall not die.
The Sháhnáma of Firdausí is one of the great epic poems of the world. The author has left on record that it originally consisted of sixty thousand couplets. All existing MSS., however, even when eked out by obvious interpolations, fall short of that number by several thousand. Part has therefore been lost or else the poet spoke in round numbers. At all events enough remains, and to all appearance pretty much as he wrote it. The authorship, so far as the present writer is aware, has never been disputed.
The poem is in rhymed couplets, and its metre— the typical heroic metre of the language in which it is written—may thus be indicated:—
Such a line as
The Pharaohs of Egypt, the Cæsars of Rome,
represents the metre of the original.
The poet wrote in almost pure Persian. The admixture of Arabic is slight, and in all probability would be slighter if we had the Sháhnáma precisely as Firdausí left it. Some Arabic the poet was bound to use—terms, for instance, in connection with his religion—but copyists, it seems probable, are responsible for most of the rest.
The poet's theme is the story of his fatherland and folk, from the Creation to the Muhammadan conquest, set forth in the form of a metrical chronicle. His subject-matter he derived from many sources, mythical, religious, historical, and popular—a classification which of course involves many cross-divisions.
His method, as might be expected, differs widely from Homer's. The contrast is in fact striking. Homer effectually hides his own personality. He plunges into the middle of his subject, and makes the period of his action as brief as possible. Selecting one central motive he weaves round it only so much of the subject-matter at his disposal as he can employ with tolerable consistency. His web is closely woven, and the workmanship so exquisite that comparatively few indications are left to betray the nature of the raw material.
Firdausí, on the other hand, takes us into his confidence from the first. In direct violation of the Horatian precept he begins from Leda's egg and earlier, and the period of his action extends over thousands of years. He uses all the epic material, good, bad, and indifferent, on which he can lay hands. His web is open-work and its design unsymmetrical. He makes no secret of his method, but tells us what his materials are and how he obtained them. He shows us in fact his loom in action, and calls our attention to the bright, many-coloured threads of myth, romance, and history which are being woven therein.
It will be readily understood that the method of the Eastern poet leads to inconsistencies and difficulties, chronological and otherwise, for which the reader should be prepared. He will find, for instance, in the mythical portions of the poem at least, the chief heroes living on through successive ages; described as old and yet fighting with all the vigour of early manhood; dropping out of sight and apparently forgotten only to reappear in their pristine vigour later on. The explanation is twofold. In the first place several of the characters of the poem were originally divine or semi-divine beings, and though introduced to us as human have in some cases not wholly lost their superhuman attributes. And in the second place the popular mythology was not, and was not designed to be, consistent. It told legends of the same hero, assigning them to different reigns, ages, and localities. A Western poet would have taken them all and forced as much as suited him into the mould of a brief action; the Eastern poet takes them at full length, and inserts them where he finds them, wholly regardless of the fact that by so doing he extends life far beyond the span of mortals.
The poem is divided into reigns. Of these there are forty-nine, and they with one dynasty, which is reckoned as a single reign, make up the fifty heads under which the subject-matter of the poem is disposed. The reigns are those of the mythic or historic Sháhs or kings of Persia, who are divided into four dynasties: I. The Pishdádian, of ten Sháhs, and lasting 2441 years. II. The Kaiánian, of ten Sháhs, and lasting 732 years. III. The Ashkánian, which is reckoned as one reign, lasting 200 years. IV. The Sásánian, of twenty-nine Sháhs, and lasting 501 years. The space of time covered is therefore 3874 years.
The poem may also be divided into two periods— a mythic and a historic. This distinction is based not so much on the nature of the subject-matter as on the names of the chief characters. At a certain point in the poem the names cease to be mythic and become historic. The Mythic Period extends from the beginning of the narrative down to the reigns of the last two Sháhs of the Kaiánian dynasty. These and the remainder of the poem form the Historic Period. The Sháhs in question are Dárá, son of Dáráb, better known as Darius Codomanus, and Sikandar—Alexander the Great.
The chief characters of the poem are:—
I. The personified powers of good and evil. The religion of the ancient Persians, from which they became converted to Muhammadanism, was that known as Fire-worship, Dualism, or Zoroastrianism. These may be taken to represent roughly three aspects of its growth and development. It was called Fire-worship from its chief visible object of adoration—a very ancient cult; Dualism from its chief tenet—the belief that the universe owed its existing form to the opposing creations and ceaseless conflicts of two supernatural beings, a good and an evil, Urmuzd and Áhriman;50 and Zoroastrianism from its legendary prophet, who may be taken to typify its priestly or ceremonial element. Urmuzd and Ahriman pervade the whole poem, and all that happens for good or ill is attributed either directly or indirectly to the one or the other. They are assumed to be constantly engaged in strife with each other, and especially on the battlefield of the world, where the struggle is carried on chiefly by means of the forces, principalities, and powers which they have called into being, or whose actions they inspire.
If the poet had confined himself to the use of the names Urmuzd and Áhriman this antagonism would have been much more marked. He was probably placed, however, in a very difficult position, not only as a Muhammadan himself but also as a poet eager for recognition at the hands of a fanatically Muhammadan Sultán. The result is a compromise. He seldom uses the word Urmuzd, but in its place such terms as Maker of the world, World-lord, the All-mighty, the righteous Judge or simply God, but hardly ever the Muhammadan Allah. On the other hand he employs the expression Áhriman with great frequency, often substituting for it, however, the word Dív, which may be rendered Fiend, and occasionally the name of the Muhammadan evil principle Iblís. Practically his conception of the good principle is Muhammadan in all but the name, while his evil principle is no longer the formidable Zoroastrian Áhriman, but approximates rather to the Muhammadan Iblís, or to the Devil of the Bible. This being premised, however, it is proposed to retain the expressions Urmuzd and Áhriman in the Introduction, as being on the whole the most suitable and convenient, and of course in the poem itself wherever they occur.
II. The Sháhs and other kings or heroes. These, so far as they are historical, may be left to speak for themselves, but those that are mythical need a word of explanation. The dualistic conception of the universe, while it tended to exalt Urmuzd and Áhriman, did so at the expense of the other deities of the ancient nature-worship who gradually became grouped in inferior capacities, according to the popular conceptions of them, round one or other of the two great principles, the beneficent round Urmuzd and the maleficent round Áhriman. In the course of time many of them came to be regarded as ancient earthly rulers and heroes, and as such they are represented in the poem, the good for the most part as Íránian and the evil as those of other races. All the chief mythical characters were once themselves gods or demigods, or were credited with such ancestors in tradition.
Direct supernatural agency is, however, infrequent in the Sháhnáma. On one side we have Urmuzd, who sometimes intervenes by his messenger and agent the angel Surúsh, and on the other Áhriman, who acts by means of his instruments the dívs, or his adherents the warlocks and witches. We have instances of white magic as well as of black. The fabulous Símurgh too— a bird somewhat resembling the roc of the “Arabian Nights,” but endowed with wisdom and articulate speech —plays an important part. Dreams, especially those in which the dead appear, are regarded as veridical, and the evil eye is much dreaded. Presentiments are held to be authentic, and use is made of amulets, elixirs, and divining-cups. The most potent agent throughout is destiny, which is represented as God's purpose with respect to man as revealed in the heavens by the aspects of the stars and planets. There is no more impressive picture in the poem than that which the poet gives us of the remorseless process of the sky, whose revolutions gradually grind down the strongest, and fill the vulgar with amaze at what they term the turns of fortune. To the sage and reader of the stars, however, the future is spread out like a book, and the astrologer, with his planispheres, astrolabes, calculations of nativities, and predictions generally, plays a considerable part in the poem. Destiny, as represented to us by the poet, is made up of two distinct elements which he does not attempt to reconcile—the Muhammadan and the Zoroastrian. The former may be summed up for the reader in two texts from the Bible:—“I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord, that doeth all these things;”52 and “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?”52a
The Zoroastrian conception is entirely different. Urmuzd and Áhriman are as distinct as light from darkness, and a hard and fast line is drawn between good and evil, whether physical or moral. Light, immortality, health, and all that is good in the worlds of mind and matter proceed from Urmuzd; darkness, death, disease, and all that is evil from Áhriman. Urmuzd created man and fashioned the twelve houses of the heavens that they might pour down their kindly influence upon him; Áhriman broke into the creation of Urmuzd and created the planets to run counter to the stars and cross their purposes. Destiny, therefore, from this point of view, being the resultant of two opposing forces, is an extremely logical deduction well borne out by the events of history and the incidents of life to an Eastern eye, but corresponds rather to what we should call fortune than to absolute fate. The Zoroastrian view, which is that of the poet's authorities, predominates over the Muhammadan, which is that of his religion. The practical result is that in the poem the sky is looked upon as the ultimate arbiter of human affairs, and often as acting wantonly and capriciously with the ruthlessness of a celestial Juggernaut. Yet the poet and his characters never fail to appeal to destiny proper on occasions when it suits them so to do, he to justify the ways of God to man, and they to make excuse for evil done or the doing of it. “It was so decreed,” pleads the evildoer; “And so was the penalty,” replies the avenger. At other times again the poet seems to hold that all is hopeless confusion, and that we cannot tell head from tail or top from bottom.
The leading motive of the Sháhnáma, so far as it can be said to have one, is Áhriman's envy of man —the creation of Urmuzd. The first attempt of the evil principle to destroy mankind once for all, in the person of their great progenitor, having failed, his next is to seduce them from their allegiance to their Creator, and in this he is largely successful; race becomes opposed to race, the faithful followers of Urmuzd are persecuted by the perverts of Áhriman, and recurring acts of provocation or revenge form a series of subsidiary motives which serve to keep alive the ancient feud. These are most prominent in the earlier portion of the Mythic period, towards the end of which a new motive is introduced by the advent of the great prophet of Urmuzd—Zarduhsht or Zoroaster. Side by side with this outward visible struggle there is the inward invisible one going on in the mind of the individual. This is more insisted on in the Historic period where the moral aspects of the struggle are discoursed on at large, and the deadly sins are personified in accordance to Zoroastrian theology as dívs or fiends in the service of Áhriman, who strive to get the mastery over the soul of man.
The historical relations of the Íránians with other Indo-European peoples, with the Semites and with the Túránians, as sketched briefly in the previous chapter, are indicated in the poem by the mythical legends of Zahhák and of the three sons of Farídún and their descendants. Zahhák represents the idolatrous element in the poem, and therefore the Semites in particular, who were the most idolatrous race with whom the Íránians came into contact. The Assyrians were notoriously idolatrous, and so were the Arabs up to the days of Muhammad. In the poem all idol-worshippers, whether of Semitic race or not, are regarded as descendants of Zahhák. The eldest son of Farídún—Salm—represents the western division of the Indo-European race, the second son Túr the Túránian, and the youngest son Íraj the Western Aryan or Íránian. The legendary accounts in the poem of Zahhák's conquest of Írán, of his overthrow by Farídún, of the partition of the world by the latter between his three sons, of the murder of Íraj by his two elder brothers, and of the great feud which thus originated, really set forth the historical relations of three of the great races of mankind as seen, from the point of view of the descendants of Íraj, through the haze of myth and legend. As to the comparative importance of these relations to the Íránians, native tradition has no hesitation in assigning the first place to the representatives of Túr, the second to those of Zahhák, and the third to those of Salm; and accordingly in the poem the struggles of the Íránians with the Túránians occupy more space than those with all other races combined. Yet the bitterest feud is with Zahhák. In other cases it is a family quarrel, but Zahhák is of another stock—a man forbid. However, all the greatest heroes of the poem spring from unions between members of races thus antagonistic. The three sons of Farídún marry the daughters of an Arab king, and their supposed descendants are therefore of mixed race. Rustam is from Zahhák upon his mother's side. Siyáwush and Kai Khusrau both have Túránian mothers. Asfandiyár and Sikandar have Rúman mothers.55
We have also to note that, according to Íránian tradition, Urmuzd did not leave himself altogether without witness even in the lands and peoples most given over to Áhriman. In the case of the Arabs we have the dynasty of Al Munzir, which is always represented as being friendly to the Íránians. This dynasty ruled at Hira. In the case of the Hindus we have the dynasty of Kaid, which is always kindly and helpful. In the case of the Túránians the tendency to goodwill is very marked in some of the characters. One of Afrásiyáb's own brothers becomes an arrant traitor in his zeal for the Íránian interest, and suffers for it at the hand of his justly indignant sovereign. The most striking instance, however, is that of the great and good Pírán, Afrásiyab's cousin, counsellor, and commander-in-chief. Though his loyalty to his own master is absolutely stainless and unimpeached, he always shows himself most friendly and generous to the Íránians, striving for peace and for a better understanding between the two races. He lives to see his honest endeavours foiled and his well-meant counsels turn out ill, but his honesty is so transparent and recognised that even the fierce tyrant whom he serves, and who suffers most for having followed his advice, has hardly a word to say against him, and he only gives up the leadership of the host with death. It is a well paid compliment by the poet to the Turkman race. It was no doubt his own contribution toward a good understanding, and happily he could not foresee the horrors which the eleventh and subsequent centuries held in store for Írán at the hands of the nations of the North.
For the preservation of the subject-matter of the Sháhnáma we are chiefly indebted to two of the classes into which Firdausí tells us ancient Íránian society was divided—the priestly class and the agricultural class — in other words the Magi and the Dihkáns. The Magi were the priests of the true Medes or Madá, among whom they formed a caste or tribe. Originally fire-priests, as their own name for themselves—Áthravans, literally “fire-men”—shows,56 they became closely associated with, even if they did not originate, the Dualism and Zoroastrianism of later times. Antiquity, which liberally credited them with all the attributes of ancient priesthood, knew them as the Magi—the great or mighty,56a and later ages are indebted to them for the potent words “magic” and “magician.” In their historical seat in Atropatene, or in the modern form of the word Ázarbíján (which has been variously explained to mean the land of the seed, of the descent of, or that guards the fire), and still more in their legendary home in Karabagh, they dwelt in the neighbourhood of scenes of natural marvel. Earthquakes are frequent there, mud-volcanoes, hot springs, and naphtha wells abound. Flames issuing from clefts in the rocks have been ablaze from time immemorial, and in autumn the exhalations from the soil form a phosphorescence that at night wraps whole districts in sheets of harmless flame. Even in parts of the Caspian the vapours bubble up, may be ignited and will go on burning, over several square yards of water till a gust of wind extinguishes them. The scene from all accounts is at times sufficiently impressive even to the modern eye, and we can easily imagine what fire in its purest form and highest expression—clear, smokeless, lambent flames, burning on unfed apparently and self-sustaining century after century—must have been to the un-rationalistic gaze of primitive antiquity. In the presence of those flames all other fires must have seemed but “broken lights.” Elsewhere they were hard to kindle, needed constant care, and were dimmed by smoke and vapours, but here they burned as in the Burning Bush. It was no wonder that the place came to be looked upon as “Holy Ground,” and that a Cult of Fire grew up there in the dim and distant past. We can well imagine too how famous the priesthood of such a Cult would become amid such surroundings. The priest of ancient times was the man of letters, the sage, the leech, the astrologer and the man of occult lore and grammarye, and this priesthood dwelt in a region which is not even now robbed of all its ancient glamour by the fact that it is the scene of the greatest petroleum industry in the world. Here Prometheus stole the fire from heaven and paid the penalty in some Caucasian gorge. Along it from north to south lay a great highway of the nations, across it from east to west ran one of the great trade routes, and the riches of India were borne from Kábul to Balkh, from Balkh down the Oxus to the Caspian,57 and thence through the land of Medea and of the Golden Fleece to the Euxine and the west. It is of course impossible to affirm that so widespread a cult as Fire-worship had its origin in one particular locality, but we shall be safe in stating that here was a most important centre of it, and in claiming for its priests a proportionate status and sanctity.58 We have already seen that Írán is a land of sharp contrasts of physical good and evil. There the kindly reticences and con-cealments of nature, the blue haze of distance and the melting of line into line, are absent, there is no neutral territory, no common meeting-ground; all is clear, sharp, well defined and recognisable beyond the possibility of mistake and at a glance as good or evil. In the regions south of the Caucasus these contrasts are accentuated, and there, it would seem, grew up Dualism suggested and justified by its surroundings.
The doctrines of the Magi, which it is beyond our scope to enter into except incidentally and by way of illustration, appear in early times to have been restricted, if not to the Magi themselves, at all events to the Medes whose priests they were. It was not until nearly the end of the sixth century before the Christian era and after the suicide of Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, that the Magi first became supreme in the vast empire which the latter had founded, for now we have evidence that neither he nor his son was the enthusiastic proselytiser of Zoroastrianism, that they were both formerly supposed to be, but at most tolerated it along with the other faiths of their world-wide empire.58a After the death of Cambyses, however, the Magi rose to power in the person of the Magus Gaumata—the false Smerdis of the Greeks—who seized the vacant throne and began, as we learn from the inscriptions of Darius Hystaspis, his slayer and successor, to overthrow the temples of the gods in his iconoclast zeal.59 As Darius further informs us that he restored these temples, and also at the same time describes himself as a worshipper of Urmuzd,59a we may assume that it was in the course of his reign that Zoroastrianism became the state-religion of the Persian empire. He also appears about B.C. 505 to have adopted the Zoroastrian calendar in the place of the old Persian one that he had used up till then, and this fact goes to support the assumption made above.59b The Magophonia or slaughter of the Magi mentioned by Herodotus,59c which has sometimes been adduced as a proof that they could not have been supreme in Persia so early as the times of Darius Hystaspis,59d is not really opposed to this view. It is pretty evident that the Magophonia was not aimed against the Magi in general, but was merely an annual celebration of the overthrow of one particular Magus— the impostor and usurper Gaumata—and his personal followers.59e Whether the Magi, in spite of the high position they had gained, ever succeeded in making their doctrines popular with the masses of the first Persian empire may well be doubted. One at least of the successors of Darius—Artaxerxes II. (B.C. 404–361)— seems to have relapsed into something very like idolatry, 59f and with the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great the power of the Magi waned for a time.
Rightly or wrongly Zoroastrian tradition couples Alexander with Zahhák and Afrásiyáb as one of the three arch enemies of the faith.59g With the introduction of Greek ideas, Greek science and Greek polytheism, there can be no doubt that the bulk of the population relapsed into idolatry, if indeed it had ever emerged. During the next five centuries the Magi must have had much ado to keep alive the doctrines, ritual, and sacred traditions of their faith. The seductions of Greek civilisation were followed by the brutalities of Parthian barbarism, and any modification of these was, during the first centuries at all events of Parthian rule, in the direction of Greek culture. The Parthian monarchs describe themselves as philhellenic on their coins. The Magi, however, were well equipped for the struggle. They had a great reputation. They held a faith in many respects much in advance of their times, and one too that found its justification in the strange natural phenomena and sharp contrasts of physical good and evil that characterise Írán. They had kept alive too, at a time when ancient Persian was passing into rapid phonetic decay, the ancient language of their race— the Median—with its inflections and archaisms, as will appear later on. Lastly, they were a priesthood practising the peculiar custom of Khvaitúk-das, or next of kin marriage, which, though most repugnant to the sentiments of mankind at large, must certainly have tended to preserve their faith from the dangerous external and foreign influences which an indiscriminate practice of marriage would have entailed. That the Magi practised Khvaitúk-das in the days of the Parthian monarchy we may learn from Catullus.60 The three principal seats of the Magi seem to have been at Shíz, Rai, and Balkh. Shíz, the Persian Gazn, is to be looked for at Takht-i-Sulaiman near the southern frontier of Ázarbíján. It contained the famous fire-temple of Ázarakhsh, which appears to be a contraction of Ázar-i-Zarduhsht, or the fire of Zarduhsht, who is supposed to have instituted it. To this temple it was the custom of the Sháhs of Persia in pre - Muhammadan times to make pilgrimages afoot.61 Rai, which was near Tihrán, seems to have been the centre of a priestly principality of great antiquity, whose priest - prince was known as the Zarduhsht. It was finally destroyed by the Muham-madans. 61a Balkh was the scene of Zarduhsht or Zoroaster's most successful missionary effort, which led to the conversion of Sháh Gushtásp. Here, too, the prophet is said to have been slain when the city was taken by the Túránian king Arjásp. Internal evidence seems to show that Firdausí used traditions emanating from each of the above centres in the Sháhnáma.
Of the early literature of the Magi we can only assume that the theogonies or sacred hymns which they chanted in the days of Herodotus61b were such as we find in their extant scriptures, just as we find the peculiar rites and ceremonies, which he describes as being practised by them,61c still in operation at a much later date. The ??tradition with regard to the literature is as follows: The original scriptures were revealed to Zoroaster by Urmuzd. Zoroaster preached them to Sháh Gushtásp, whose capital was at Balkh. Gushtásp ordered the original to be deposited in the treasury of Shapígán and copies to be made and disseminated, one of which was laid up in the fortress of documents. When “the evil destined villain Alexander” invaded Írán the copy in the fortress of documents was burnt; that in the treasury of Shapígán fell into Alexander's hands and was translated by his command into Greek.62 King Valkash ordered a collection to be made of the scriptures, which in his days existed in Írán in a scattered state owing to the disruption caused by the Macedonian conquest.62a Ardshír, the son of Pápak, who overthrew the Parthians and restored the Íránian monarchy, also made a collection of the scriptures. He employed for that purpose the high-priest Tausar, who reproduced a similitude of the original as it had existed in the treasury of Shapígán.62b Shápúr, the son of Ardshír, made a collection of writings of a non-religious character dealing with medicine, astronomy, and other scientific subjects that had been scattered among the Hindus and Rúmans, and ordered them to be incorporated with what had already been brought together, which was done.62c Shápúr, the son of Hurmuzd, instituted a tribunal for the determination of all points of disputed doctrine. These points were settled by ordeal, and thenceforth the Sháh proclaimed and insisted on uniformity.62d
With regard to this account legend places the birthplace and home of Zoroaster in Írán-vej.62e Here on the Mountain of the Holy Questions he met Urmuzd face to face, and received from him in a series of dialogues the tenets of the faith. Here too the prophet was assailed by the demon Búiti sent by Áhriman, and subsequently tempted by the latter in person. Both were, however, worsted, and Zoroaster began his missionary career.62f His great success seems to have been at Balkh, one of the chief centres of Aryan civilisation. This we may interpret as meaning that Zoroastrianism spread from West to East along the line of the great trade-route. The extant portions of the Zoroastrian scriptures have many allusions to Balkh and Eastern Irán generally, and in the later part of the Mythic period of the poem the scene is shifted thither. With regard to Alexander the Great the legend is that he burnt these scriptures, which were written on twelve thousand ox-hides, at Persepolis.63 During the domination of the Parthians Írán was broken up into a number of small tributary principalities under native chiefs, some of whom seem to have maintained a Magian priesthood and sacred fires of their own.63a
It is possible that it may have been the rise of local Zoroastrian cults with divergent doctrines and ritual that led King Valkash, in his capacity of overlord, to make a collection of the scriptures with a view to the establishment of a canon and uniformity. Valkash himself has been well identified with the Parthian king Vologeses I. (A.D. 50–78), whose brother Tiridates is known to have been a Magus.63b A letter written by Tausar to explain and justify his proceedings in regard to the reform of the faith is still in existence.63c Ardshír, the son of Pápak, who employed him, was the first Sháh (A.D. 226–240) of the Sásánian dynasty and was himself a Magus.63d The legendary destruction of the original scriptures was of course the excuse for adding to the canon in the reign of Shápur I. (A.D. 240–271) by restoring to their proper place the translations made under Alexander. With Shápúr II. (A.D. 309–379) about A.D. 330 the canon was traditionally closed,63e but as a matter of fact there was some amount of addition and revision as late as Chosroes I. (A.D. 531–579), after the disturbance to the faith caused by Mazdak.63f
The language of the scriptures is commonly but incorrectly known as Zend. It seems almost certain that really it should be known as Median.64 Zend, i.e. Median, as preserved in its scriptures, and ancient Persian, as preserved in the inscriptions of the Achaemenids, are two sister-languages collaterally related to Sanscrit. How and when Zend became extinct, whether it still survives in a modified form in some modern dialect such as the Kúrd, does not seem to have been yet determined; but the existence of the Zandavasta indicates that it remained known to and used by the Magi in its inflectional form long after its sister-language the Persian had lost most of its inflections and had become greatly simplified. Zend may thus be regarded as being during the five centuries and a half which elapsed between the death of Darius Codomanus and the accession of Ardshír Pápakán the sacred language of the Magi—one known only to themselves and holding with them very much the same position as Sanscrit did among the Brahmans of India. During this period ancient Persian was itself being converted into middle Persian or Pahlaví.64a Pahlaví, it should be explained, is the same word as Parthian, and in this connection means not the language spoken by the Parthians themselves, but that used under their rule by their Persian or Íránian subjects.65 To the people at large in Sásánian times the language in which the inscriptions of Darius Hystaspis and his successors had been written, and that of the Zoroastrian scriptures compiled by Tausar and others, were alike unintelligible. It accordingly became the custom in making copies to append a Pahlaví version, paraphrase, or comment on the original text. The scriptures themselves were known as the Avasta, and all comments thereon, whether in the original language or in Pahlaví, were known as the Zend or Zand. The chief Zand was of course the Pahlaví version of the Avasta, and the two combined became known as the Avasta and Zand, or more commonly as the Zandavasta.65a Like the Bible it preserved in a literary form all that survived in the traditions of a race, and these were grouped round and told in connection with a line or lines of demigods or heroes, whose names show that they were originally those of the beneficent and maleficent impersonations of the ancient nature-worship of the Aryan people, before it broke up into its Indian and Íránian divisions. The names referred to are common in a somewhat altered form both to the Zandavasta and to the ancient Sanscrit hymns of India—the Vedas.65b We may regard the traditions of the Zan-davasta as essentially Magian; they were destined, however, to undergo a remarkable development and expansion in other hands.
The triumph of Zoroastrianism, the translation of the Zandavasta into Pahlaví, i.e. into the vernacular, and the consequent diffusion of the traditions of the Magi throughout Írán occurred at an epoch when five and a half centuries of alien rule (B.C. 331–A.D. 226) had obliterated all but the vaguest reminiscences of the first Persian empire and the house of Achaemenes. The consequence was that the mythical demigods of the Zandavasta came to be regarded in Sásánian times as the historic Sháhs of the Íránian race. These and what was recorded of them in the Zandavasta formed a convenient epic framework whereon to hang legends of Assyrian oppression, Arab raids, Túránian invasions, wars with the West, the deeds of national or local heroes, and all the miscellaneous products of popular tradition and imagination. The development of the legends of the Zandavasta accordingly went on apace, and the chief agents in the process were the Dihkáns. This was the name given to the rural landowners of Írán. Firdausí himself seems to have been the son of a Dihkán. All the world over the rural populations are the depositories of national tradition. A notable instance occurred only so long ago as the last century when Dr. Elias Lönnrot, after years of wandering among the remotest districts of Finland, dwelling with the peasantry and taking down from their lips all that they knew of their popular songs, ultimately succeeded in collecting nearly twenty-three thousand verses which, arranged by him and divided into fifty runes, now form the national Finnish epic known as the Kalewala.66 Much the same process went on in Írán at an earlier date. Traditions based on the Zanda-vasta were recited in the halls of the chiefs, at village festivals and at street-corners—a custom still obtaining in Persia—till in time the word Dihkán came to have a well recognised secondary meaning—that of professional story-teller, rustic bard, or wandering minstrel. In the course of the Sásánian dynasty these traditions were collected and put into writing. The result was variously known as the Bástán, Khudai, and Sháh Náma, with the respective meanings of History of the Past, of the Lords, and of the Kings. In Baisinghar Khán's Preface already referred to there is an account of the Bástán-náma which may thus be summarised. Sháh Núshírwán collected the traditions and deposited the MSS. in his library. Yazdagird, the last of the Sásánians, employed the Dihkán Dánishwar to catalogue and supplement these histories and arrange them in chronological order from the reign of Gaiúmart to that of Khusrau Parwíz. At the time of the Muhammadan conquest of Persia they were sent to 'Umar, the commander of the faithful, who had them translated and only partially approved of their contents. In the general division of the Persian spoil the books fell into the hands of the Abyssinians, who presented them to King Jasha, who had them translated and highly commended them. They became well known in his dominions and in Hind, whence they were brought by Ya'kúb Lais, who commanded Abú Mansúr, son of Abdu'r-Razzák, to transcribe into Persian what Dánishwar the Dihkán had told in Pahlaví, and complete the history from the time of Khusrau Parwíz to the end of the reign of Yazdagird. Abú Mansúr instructed an officer of his father's, Su'úd, son of Mansúr Alma-'mari, in conjunction with four others—Táj, son of Khurásání of Harát, Yazdándád, son of Shápúr of Sístán, Máhwí, son of Khurshíd of Níshápúr, and Shádán, son of Barzín67 of Tús—to undertake the task. When the house of the Sámánids came into power they took the greatest interest in the work thus translated, and entrusted it to the poet Dakíkí to put into verse. When he had written one or two thousand couplets he was murdered by his slave, and thus the matter remained till the days of Mahmúd, who encouraged Firdausí to complete the work.
As Baisinghar Khán's preface dates from the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and contains much that is obviously romantic, it is needful to receive the above account with all caution. Even when we have rejected the story of King Jasha and the Abyssinians we are still confronted by a chronological impossibility. Ya'kúb, the son of Lais the coppersmith, died in A.D. 878. Abú Mansúr, who had the work of the Dihkán Dánishwar translated, was a brother of Muhammad, son of Abdu'r-Razzák, and this Muhammad was prince of Tús in the middle of the tenth century,68 in the days when Firdausí was growing up. Ya'kúb and Abú Mansúr were therefore not contemporaries. Ya'kúb had worked in his father's shop as a youth, he then became a robber-chief, and finally fought his way to what was practically the lordship of Írán. As a native of Sístán, the home of a race whose warlike proclivities were symbolised in the legendary exploits and character of the national hero of Írán, Rustam, or as the founder of a new dynasty, for political reasons he may have taken an interest in the old traditions; but he could not have commissioned Abú Mansúr to do the work for him, and it will be safer to dismiss the notion that he interested himself in the compilation of the Dihkán Dánishwar as highly problematical. On the other hand, the statement in Baisinghar Khán's preface that Abú Mansúr did have a Sháhnáma compiled is confirmed by the learned Abú Raihán Muhammad bin 'Ahmad Albírúní (A.D. 973–1048) in his “Chronology of Ancient Nations.”68a Again we may be somewhat sceptical as to whether a Dihkán named Dánishwar ever existed, but we may concede that the ancient traditions were collected and edited by some learned (dánishwar) Dihkán and indeed by many such.
The names of the five men employed by Abú Mansúr are all Persian, and the men themselves were in all probability Magi, for none but they would be likely to know Pahlaví in the tenth century. One of the five, Shádán son of Barzín, is mentioned by Fir-dausí as his authority for the story of the introduction into Persia of Bidpai's Fables in the reign of Núshír-wán. 69 Dakíkí, the poet who was first entrusted with the task of versifying the Sháhnáma, was a fire-worshipper, as four lines of his bear witness:—
“Of all of this world's good and ill
Four things Dakíkí chooseth still—
Girl's ruby lips, the sound of lyre,
The blood-red wine, the Faith of Fire.”
Firdausí tells us in his Prelude, § 10, that when on Dakíkí's murder he determined to carry on the work himself he had great difficulty in obtaining the needful materials for the purpose, and was for a while nonplussed by want of them. His statement seems to require some explanation, for, in addition to the considerable Pahlaví literature then extant, the collections made by learned Dihkáns had been translated into Arabic, and were obtainable in numerous histories in that language. Albírúní tells us that the poet Abú-'Alí Muhammad bin 'Ahmad Albalkhí in his Sháhnáma refers to the authors of five such separate histories as his authorities.69a If, however, we accept Nöldeke's view that Firdausí, in spite of his apparent assertions to the contrary, knew no Pahlaví, was as good as ignorant of Arabic, and used only authorities written in the Persian of his own day,69b we can understand his difficulty about his materials. He could make no progress till he had obtained a copy of Abú Mansúr's Sháhnáma, perhaps the identical copy used by Dakíkí. The poet in fact seems to speak of his Pahlaví authorities as we might speak of the Hebrew Scriptures, meaning the Old Testament, though we may know them only in the English version. His chief authority was doubtless the Sháhnáma of Abú Mansúr, which as we have seen had been translated into modern Persian directly from Pahlaví originals. He also used, as it would seem, translations into modern Persian of Arabic histories themselves translated from Pahlaví originals. Certain passages in the Sháhnáma, where Iblís is substituted for Ahriman as the name of the evil principle, may be attributed with confidence to such secondary authorities. Pahlaví originals70 and Arabic versions have alike disappeared, and the Sháh-náma of Firdausí, which alone survives of all the many Sháhnámas that once existed, has now become the principal storehouse of Íránian legend, and the leading authority on the subject. The Sháhnáma of Firdausí then is a true epic, not a great poet's invention, and the proof is to be found in the nature of his subject-matter and in his own words. He expressly disclaims all originality, telling us that the tale had all been told before, and that all the fruit that had fallen in the garden of knowledge had been already garnered. His share was to mould into song the epos of his native land, scorning no tale, however lowly, and putting the best and purest interpretation on all that he found.70a
The cosmogony of the poem assumes the earth to be flat and to be supported on the horns of a bull which stood on the back of a fish which swam in the great ocean.70b The earth was environed by the gigantic Alburz Mountains which reached to heaven.70c The range was pierced by 180 apertures in the East, and 180 in the West. Through these the sun made its daily entrance and exit, travelling round the outside during the night from the West back to the East.70d The apertures were intended to account for the changes of place in the rising and the setting of the sun throughout the year. The earth was divided into Seven Climes, the central being Írán, which was surrounded by the other six and was as large as all the rest put together. It was divided from them by vast mountain ranges.70e The Central Clime was also surrounded by the Eastern equivalent of the Homeric Oceanus or Ocean-stream, for the Indus, Oxus, Aras, Euxine, Bosphorus, Sea of Marmora, Dardanelles, Nile, and Indian Ocean were regarded as a chain of rivers, lakes, gulfs, and seas all in connection with each other.70f This confusion, especially as regards the Oxus and the Aras, frequently seems to have misled the poet himself. He was a native of Eastern Írán, and naturally supposed that the river so constantly referred to in the poem as the boundary between Írán and Túrán was the Oxus. He shaped matters accordingly, but it can hardly be doubted that the river of his authorities was the Aras.70g The substitution of Aras for Oxus throws a flood of light upon the wars, campaigns, and political relations recorded in the Sháhnáma, especially during the first and longest portion of the Mythic Period.
The position of the Medes on the Aras explains how the incursions into Ázarbíján of the Assyrians in early, and of the Arabs in later, times came to be embodied in the story, how we come to have the wars with the Túránians brought so prominently before us, why the arch-enemy Afrásiyáb is recorded to have been taken prisoner in lake Urumiah, and why the writer of the Armenian history who passes under the name of Moses of Chorene couples the two great enemies of the Medes in his account of Persian fable:—“Quid autem tibi sunt voluptati viles ac vanae de Byraspe Astyage fabulae?”72 Byrasp or Bíwarasp is the Pahlaví term for Zahhák. Astyages was the great Túránian king of Ekbatana and sometime overlord of Cyrus. The vast spaces and regions of the Oxus have always been a difficulty to the student of the Sháhnáma, but substitute the comparatively narrow area between the Caspian and the Euxine and much is explained.72a
Thus far Firdausí follows the old Íránian cosmogony. In the case of the heavens he rejects it; and its four heavens of the Stars, of the Moon, of the Sun, and of the Endless Lights, become nine in the poem—those of the seven planets, of the angels, and of the throne of God. These heavens were supposed to be crystalline spheres with independent motions and fitting one inside another like Chinese boxes. The seven planets are the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn.
Firdausí took his imagery chiefly from the ancient cosmogony, or from the natural features of his native land. A Sháh's dominion extends from the Moon to the Fish, or all the Seven Climes obey him. Armies stretch from mountain to mountain, or from sea to sea. The warriors' heads touch the Sun or Saturn. The warriors themselves are, or are like, mountains, lions, elephants, leopards, and crocodiles, they level the hills with their battle-cries, and pierce with their spears the hearts of flints. Their palaces and castles bar the eagle's flight, rise above the clouds or hold converse with the stars. Troops throng like locusts and ants, and even gnats can find no room to pass them. In battle the field or even the whole world is a sea or stream of gore. A tiger bestrides an elephant and brandishes a crocodile, which being interpreted means that a cavalier waves his sword. Swords too are, or are like, diamonds; while spears turn the earth to a reed-bed. One horse is so keen of sight that it can see an ant's foot on black cloth at night two leagues away. Rapid motion is compared to fire or to its spirit Ázargashasp, who is often an equivalent for the lightning, to wind, smoke, or dust, the last being the commonest figure in the poem. The reader, like the poet, will find it ubiquitous, and will not fail to notice in the accounts of marches, battlefields, and single combats, &c., that the sky, sun, moon, &c., are said to grow like indigo or ebony, or to become veiled or to turn dark at noonday, &c. The allusion is to the dust. To say that the air darkened is often merely another way of saying that the dust rose; and both, and kindred expressions, are in constant use to indicate that hosts or individuals have set forth on some expedition, are approaching or engaging in battle, &c. Opposed to the dust—the enemy, is water—the friend. “Where land and water are my treasure is,” says one of the Sháhs in the poem, and the poet compares the joy of having one's work approved by the wise to that of seeing plenty of water in one's own canal. Consequently it is not the blue but the cloudy sky that delights the Persian eye, and spring, with its clouds and thunder-showers, flowers, and verdure, is the favourite season. “The hand of Mahmúd,” says the poet, “is like a cloud in spring.” Perpetual spring is the Persian's notion of a perfect climate. A king adorns his rose-garden like spring, i.e. he summons all his great men about him and holds a court. The Persian year began with the spring, and the beginning of the New Year was a season of rejoicing. The cheek in joy or health is like the rose, tulip, pomegranate, or Judas-tree blossoms, in fear or passion like those of jasmine or fenugreek, or as colourless as sandarach, the transparent gum of the Callitris Quadrivalvis, of which pounce is made. In passion, too, or fear, the body shakes like a willow-tree, the heart and liver become full of blood, the veins throb and the blood itself boils. The narcissus bedews the rose when beauty weeps. Stature is like the cypress, which is also the tree of the burial-ground, the tree of posthumous fame, or like the teak. In old age the straight-stemmed cypress stoops. A youth of promise is a sapling bearing its first fruits. To take any important step is to plant a tree it may be of revenge or of some prudent act of policy, and the fruit of the tree will according to circumstances turn out to be either gems or colocynth. The poet is fond of moralising on life, its transient nature and vicissitudes. His favourite figure for the former is the wayside caravanserai or inn where as pilgrims or travellers we sojourn for a brief space, and then departing yield our room to others; for the latter he appeals to the configuration of his native land—the apparently endless alternation of ascent and descent with which all who have sojourned in those parts are well acquainted—or by a bolder flight describes how a man is raised to Saturn or the Pleiades only to be flung into the ditch or to the Fish—the mythological one referred to above.
Like other poets Firdausí suffered from the constraint of rhyme. When for instance we find “Balkh” at the end of one hemistich of a couplet, “talkh” is pretty certain to be at the end of the other, and as “talkh” means “bitter” the sense of such passages is apt to be strained. Similarly the changes are rung with great frequency on the words “níl” (indigo or the Nile), “míl” (a mile), and “píl” (an elephant) as verse-endings. The first of these three words is one of the translator's “thorns in the flesh,” the poet using it in so many different connections that it is impossible to find a formula of explanation that will cover them all. Relief from an English point of view is sometimes obtained by substituting, with Mohl, “blue sea” for “River Nile,” but the best antidote, as Firdausí would say, for the bane of the word is Butler's couplet:—
“For rhyme the rudder is of verses,
With which, like ships, they steer their courses.”
In other words, the poet uses “níl” for the sound more often than for the sense, and translator and reader alike must take the consequence; but they are at all events exonerated from seeking in such passages for some recondite meaning which Firdausí himself never intended to convey.
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Nam Magus ex matre et gnato gignatur oportet, si??vera est Persarum impia relligio.
Carmen, lxxxix., ed. C. H. Weise.
For Khvaitúk-das see WPT, ii. 389. Cf. GHP, i. 89.
↩* The italics are Professor Darmesteter's.
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