THE poet praises Sultán Mahmúd and then, having no subject-matter in connexion with this dynasty, proceeds to narrate the story of the rise of the race of Sásán in the person of Ardshír Pápakán and of his triumph over Ardawán, the last of the Ashkánians. He then goes on to tell of Ardshír's campaign against the Kurds, and of the strange case of Haftwád and the Worm.

The abridgment of the epoch of the Ashkánians to 200 years is more drastic even than that of other Oriental writers. Mas'údí's curious explanation of this matter will be found later on.*

In one respect at least the Sháhnáma presents a remarkable analogy to the land of its origin: the central portion of both is a barron waste. Of the five centuries and more that intervened between the day of the death of Sikandar (Alexander the Great) and that on which Ardshír Pápakán (Artaxerxes I.) was acclaimed King of kings by his victorious troops on the battle-field of Hurmuzdagán,*

that is to say between June 13th B.C. 323 and September 26th A.D. 226, Firdausí knew absolutely nothing save a few names and the semi-mythical circumstances attendant on the coming into being of the second Persian or Sásánian Empire. Consequently, for convenience sake, the period covered by the Ashkánian dynasty has come to be regarded merely as a single reign—the twenty-first in the long series of the fifty Sháhs. After all, however, this dearth of subject-matter in the core of the poem is not so complete as it seems. Firdausí took his authorities as he found them, and long before his days Íránian tradition already had assigned all of heroic or noteworthy that had remained in memory of Ashkánian times to the mythical epochs of the Pishdádian and Kaiánian dynasties. He spoke of the ancient tongue (Pahlaví) and of the paladins (Pahlaváns), he told at large the gests of Káran, Gúdarz, Gív, Bízhan, and others, but had no notion that he was dealing with words, names, personalities, and subject-matter, that had originated in a period dismissed by him in a few couplets as a legendary blank.*

Again, apart from those heroes of secondary importance, there can be little doubt but that to the invasion of the Sacæ, which took place in Parthian times,*

we owe the Personification of that warrior-race, Rustam himself, the great paladin of paladins. The importance of the Ashkánian dynasty in the provenance of the subject-matter of the Sháhnáma therefore is much greater than superficially is apparent, and if all the legendary material of the poem could be replaced in its proper setting there would be no longer such discrepancies in length and interest between this and the two preceding dynasties. Historically of course it synchronises with one of the most important periods in the world's history, that of the successors of Alexander the Great, of the Parthian dynasty, and of the dominance of Rome. No one, least of all a translator, would wish that the Sháhnáma were longer, but one may regret that the misplaced material, which so inordinately prolongs the Kaiánian dynasty, was not kept in its proper connexion in the Ashkánian. As things stand the latter is a mere prelude to the Sásánian dynasty, and is concerned with the rise to power of Ardshír Pápakán, its founder, between which and that of Cyrus the Great there is a remarkable resem­blance. In both cases there had been a previous incursion of nomads which had resulted in the establishment of their supremacy in western Írán. In the first case it was the Manda who, being confounded with the Madá or true Medes,*

brought about the establishment of the so-called Median Empire under which the dynasty of the Achæmenids occupied a subordinate position in Elam and Párs till the successful rebellion of Cyrus, king of Elam, against his over-lord Astyages, and his other conquests, reduced all western Asia underneath his rule. In the second case it was the Parthians, also nomads, who established a like empire over the same regions, and under whom the rulers of the house of Pápak or Sásán similarly occupied a subordinate position in Párs. As in the case of Cyrus, so Ardshír, the son of Pápak, successfully rebelled against his over-lord, and founded a great Persian empire. Again, the rise to power of Cyrus and Ardshír was embellished in each case by legend. In that of Cyrus two distinct accounts have come down to us, from Herodotus and Ctesias respectively. The former is that given, mutatis mutandis, by Firdausí in his story of the early years of Kai Khusrau,*

the latter was transferred in Íránian legend from Cyrus to Ardshír as Gutschmid pointed out, who says, speaking of the fable that forms the kernel of the story:—“The hero is a Persian shepherd's son; from dreams shared by his parents the dream-interpreters predicted his future greatness; in his youth he came to the Median Court and there, through a strange fatality, has to do hard service; the crisis comes at last, and with it the flight of the hero to his home in Persis. Directly he has fled the astrologers declare that unless he be brought back in a given time he certainly will gain the kingdom, which comes to pass. This in a short sketch is the story of Ardshír; it is, however, exactly that of Cyrus, translated by Median hands but founded on Persian national sagas as given by Ctesias. The resemblance extends even to trifles; from the stable, where he has to do the most menial work, Ardshír starts on the flight which is to end in his gaining the sovereignty; at the moment when Cyrus resolves to break with Astyages he is met by a Persian slave, Hoibaras, carrying horse's dung in a basket, and that is in­terpreted as a good omen, horse's dung signifying riches and might (Nicolaus of Damascus, fr. 66, by Müller, iii. p. 400). So great a similarity certainly is not accidental, rather we recognise in it an old national saga transferred from the founder of the old Persian kingdom to the founder of the new.”*

The Íránian version of this legend, as applied to Ardshír, is extant in the Sháhnáma and in a Pahlaví text very similar in provenance and character to the Yátkár-i-Zarírán with which we were concerned in the previous volume of this translation.*

The work in question begins, after an invocation to Urmuzd, thus:—“In the history of Ardshír, son of Pápak, the following is written.” The word for “history” in the original is “kárnámak,” which is used now as the title of the extant work, and not of the one, now lost, from which it was taken. Our extant Kárnámak appears to date from the seventh century A.D., and is separable into portions each of which once, in all probability, formed an independent legend. Thus we have

1. The adapted Cyrus legend.

2. Ardshír's war with the Kurds.

3. The story of the Worm.

4. The two stories of Shápúr.

These are strung loosely together as illustrations, each in its degree, of the process that led to the restoration of Íránian unity at the hands of Ardshír Pápakán and his immediate successors. The subject-matter of the Kárnámak corresponds with §§ 3-16 of the Ashkánians, and with §§ 1-6 of Ardshír Pápakán, but, like the Yátkár-i-Zarírán in Dakíkí's case, it is not the actual authority followed by the poet but a collateral one. This is clear from the fact that it omits a very important passage given by Firdausí,*

while it contains a somewhat touching episode which is not in the Sháhnáma, though it seems incredible that the poet should have made no use of it had he known it.*

The episodes of the self-mutilation of Ardshír's minister,*

and of the game of polo, whereby the Sháh recognised his son, also are lacking in the Kárnámak, though the polo-episode is found there in another connexion.*

Other differences are due to Firdausí's more poetical and artistic way of looking at things, and to the toning down of the somewhat pronounced Zoroastrianism that appears in the Pahlaví original, but he may have found this already done in the version that he followed, which was, in all probability, that contained in the modern Persian tenth century prose Sháhnáma.*

The compilers of that work seem, however, on the whole to have preferred, or at all events for the most part to have followed, the Arabic versions, and this preference is reflected in the poem.

Wherever in the following notes a comparison is instituted between the Kárnámak and Firdausí the former will be referred to as K and the latter as F.

§ 1. In the text of C this forms the concluding portion of § 40 of the previous reign. We follow the arrangement in P.

For Nasr, who is referred to again under the title of Abú'l Muzaffar just below, see Vol. i. p. 100.

At first sight there seems to be a chance here of our being able to determine at what date this passage was written, owing to Firdausí's reference to some occasion on which Mahmúd remitted a year's land-tax, but the fatality which attends all matters of date in the poem is operative even here, and there appears to be no account of this remission elsewhere.*

§ 2. As to who the thane (dihkán) of Chách was nothing more seems to be known.

It is the fashion of Íránian legend to connect the dynasties by means of fictitious genealogies. Accordingly the Ashkánians are represented as being descended from Kai Árash, the second son of Kai Kubád, the words Ashk and Árash being sufficiently alike to have suggested the connexion. Ashk is a word expressive of kingly virtues such as “wise,” “pure,” “holy.” In the West it took the form of Arsaces. In the Oriental lists of the kings of the Ashkánian dynasty the other names here mentioned by Firdausí occur, sometimes more than once. There are two Ashks, one Shápúr, several of the name of Gúdarz, one or two Bízhans, two or three Narsís, one or two of the name of Urmuzd or Hurmuz, no Árash, who perhaps is inserted in the Sháhnáma to keep up the nominal connexion with the second son of Kai Kubád, and three or four Ardawáns.*

The one here mentioned by Firdausí is the last of that name, and the poet, it appears, considered that his real name was Bahrám, but in the lists there is only one so called, and he is placed much earlier. Some account of Bahrám, Gúdarz, and Bízhan, in this connexion, has been given already.*

In the last reign we had Firdausí's story of the establishment by Sikandar of the system of Part or Tribal Kings and his motives in so doing.*

Though Sikandar's share in the matter is of course wholly unhistorical, the view taken in Íránian legend of the political system that obtained after his death is, broadly speaking, fairly correct. Írán never again was organised under one supreme head, as it had been in the days of the first Persian empire, till the establishment of the second empire five and a half centuries later. The death of Alexander was followed by long wars due to the rival ambitions of his generals and their descendants. Later on came wars with Rome and the rise of the Parthian power, which remained for centuries the great bulwark of the East against Roman aggression. The system of Parthian rule, however, was a nomad one. It originated in the victories of a nomad tribe, and it was to the nomads that the Parthian kings turned for succour in their hours of need. They called themselves indeed by the title of King of kings, as the Achæmenids did before them, and some of them at all events professed the same religion, but national Íránian tradition never recognised their right to use the ancient Persian title of supreme ruler though, in a sense, it was more applicable to them than to their pre­decessors. With the Achæmenids it was a claim to universal sovereignty, with the Arsacids a claim to the suzerainty of Írán. The geographical extent of the lands ruled by themselves, or by their governors on their behalf, was not very great, and the remainder of their empire consisted of kingdoms that retained at least a semi-independence under native rulers. Such, for instance, were the kingdoms of Osroene, Gordyene, and Atropatane (Azarbáiján) in the north, Elymais (Elam) and Párs in the south, and Sístán and Bactria in the east. Further, in the case of Párs, as we learn from Tabarí, and, we may presume, elsewhere also, these Part or Tribal Kings had under them small local kings or princes. In the days of Firdausí's Ardawán, the last Parthian Great King, there seem to have been four such rulers in Párs, one of whom was Pápak, under his immediate over-lord, the Part or Tribal King who ruled at Istakhr. Thus in Parthian times Írán was split into two great divisions, one under the Parthian Great King and organised into eighteen provinces administered by satraps directly responsible to him; the other under semi-independent potentates who held the same position with reference to their regal underlings as he held towards them. According to the Kárnámak there were in all 240 kings, according to Arab authorities there were 90,*

so the Parthian over-lord was entitled to describe himself as King of kings.

§§ 3-9. Tabarí's account of the rise of the Sásánian dynasty is briefly as follows:—Ardshír was the son of Pápak, king of Khír, and was born at a village named Tírúdih in the same neighbourhood. His grandfather, Sásán, was the superintendent of a Fire-temple in Istakhr. His grandmother, Sásán's wife, was of the royal house of the Bázrangí, and was named Rámbihisht. Pápak succeeded his father, and to him was born Ardshír. The king of Istakhr at that time was of the race of the Bázrangí, and his name was Gúzihr. He had a eunuch called Tírí whom he made commandant of Dárábgird. When Ardshír was seven years old his father Pápak took him to see Gúzihr, who lived at Baidá,*

and asked him to allow Tírí to bring up Ardshír, who ultimately was to succeed Tírí at Dárábgird. Gúzihr assented, and Ardshír in course of time succeeded Tírí as had been arranged. For a while he remained free from ambition till it was roused in him by the predictions of astrologers and the announcement to him by an angel*

in a dream, that he was destined to rule Írán. Thereupon he began to assert himself by attacking and slaying three local kings in Párs, and setting up adherents of his own in their stead. He then wrote to his father Pápak, urging him to rise against Gúzihr at Baidá. Pápak did so, slew Gúzihr, and took his crown. Then Pápak wrote to Ardawán for permission to crown his (Pápak's) son, Shápúr, with the crown of Gúzihr. Ardawán replied that Pápak and Ardshír had acted as rebels. Pápak died, his son Shápúr became king and summoned his brother Ardshír to court. Ardshír refused to come, Shápúr marched against him, but on the way to Dárábgird was killed by the fall of part of one of the buildings of Humái.*

On this Ardshír went to Istakhr and, with the assent of his other brothers, became king. However, on the pretext, or in consequence, of a conspiracy on their part against him, he put many of them to death later on. He then reduced Dárábgird, where the people had taken the opportunity of his absence to rebel against him. Next he conquered the king of Kirmán, and annexed that district, of which he made one of his own sons governor. After this he slew Astawadh, a king on the coast of the Persian sea. Next he conquered Mihrak, a king in the district of Ardshír-Khurra, where he founded the town of Gúr, and, while thus engaged, received a hostile letter from Ardawán, which he answered in a similar tone, and returned to Istakhr. After this he made three distinct expeditions from Párs. In the first he subdued Ispahán, Ahwáz, a district on the small Tigris,*

and other places. In the second he went to Ahwáz by way of Girih and Kázirún and on to Maishán where he built the town of Karakh-Maishán. In the third he encountered Ardawán at Hurmuzdagán, slew him, and the same day was hailed King of kings. The date of this battle seems to have been September 26th, A.D. 226, but the actual site, according to Pro­fessor Nöldeke, is unknown, and he is of the opinion that the three expeditions of Ardshír from Párs, mentioned above, corre­spond with the three battles that, according to Western writers, took place before Ardawán was disposed of for good and all.*

The plain of Rám Hurmuz, south of Shúshtar, has been suggested as the probable scene of the decisive battle.*

§ 3. In the Sháhnáma the Sásánian dynasty is connected with the Kaiánian by a double genealogy, one already given under the reign of Bahman,*

the other here. Both are fictitious, Tabarí's account making it clear with regard to the latter that Ardshír was the son, not the grandson on the female side only, of Pápak.*

In Tabarí also two genealogies are given, both of which serve to connect the line of Pápak with the Kaiánians. They run as follow:—*

Two similar genealogies, tracing back the line of Ardshír to Luhrásp, are given by Mas'údí.*

Neither he nor Tabarí credits the legends, found in the Kárnámak and in the Sháhnáma, that Sásán was a shepherd in the employment of Pápak, who adopted him and gave him a daughter in marriage. In Firdausí Pápak is called the son of Rúdyáb, but as the poet makes that name a rhyme-word it is open to suspicion apart from the fact that it does not appear in any of the above-mentioned genealogies. The same reason, probably, led Firdausí (F) to put the visit of the master of the herds (ramah) to Pápak in the winter-season (damah)—a touch not found in the Kárnámak (K). In K Pápak has three dreams. The first of them, in which he sees the sun illuminating the whole world from the head of Sásán, is not in F. In K too the three Fires are Frúbá, representing the priestly class, Gushasp, the warrior-class, and Mihr Barzin, the agricultural.*

The sending of Sásán to the bath, doubtlessly a very necessary preliminary, is not in the more primitive K.

§ 4. Ardawán, the Artabanus III. or IV. of Western writers, the last ruler of the Parthian dynasty, was regarded in Persian historical tradition as being himself the chief Tribal or Part King, the primus inter pares, not as the general suzerain, and as having Media Magna as his territory. Hence F assigns him Rai as his capital.*

K adds chess to the accomplishments learnt by Ardshír at Court, but F tells us further on, under the reign of Núshírwán, the story of its introduction into Persia.

The present of money that accompanied Pápak's reply to Ardshír is not mentioned in K.

§ 5. The details of the slave-girl's descent by means of a lasso in order to visit Ardshír, and her name, are not in K, which omits too the mention of Pápak's death and Ardawán's appoint­ment of a successor, and makes Ardawán the Part King over Ispahán, Párs, and the neighbouring lands, and Pápak himself the prince of Párs.*

The account of the astrologers working out their calcula­tions in the house of the slave-girl, and her over-hearing them, is lacking in K, which gives no reason for her knowledge in the matter. On the other hand the pronouncements of the astrologers are more elaborate and technical in K, where also they state that the servant who escapes from his master in the course of the next three days will supplant him.*

§ 6. In K the fugitives arrive at a village, where they are afraid to stop, and are met by two women who tell Ardshír to fear not, and to hasten to the sea where he will be safe. In F the fugitives reach a pool where they want to drink and rest, but are warned by two young men to hasten on. In K Ardawán thrice in the course of his pursuit inquires of those whom he meets as to how far the fugitives are ahead. On the third occasion it is a caravan that he comes upon. F omits the caravan passage.

For the mountain-sheep see Vol. i. p. 374.

§ 7. F is more detailed here. In K the corresponding passage runs thus:—“Then he (Ardawán) sent an equipped army to Párs, under his own son, to take Ardshír prisoner.*

In the meanwhile Ardshír went his way to the coast. As he proceeded, some of the men of Párs, who were hostile to Ardawán, handed over to him goods and chattels and their own persons, and promised him fealty and obedience.”*

The city founded by Ardshír was called Rív-Ardshír.*

§ 8. In K we have Banák of Ispahán with six sons for the Tabák of Jahram with seven sons of F. The Persian for “seven” comes in handily as a rhyme-word; hence the change. In K it is stated that Ardshír called the district where he first met Banák “Rámishn-i-Ardshír,” i.e. “Joy of Ardshír,” and founded a city there of the same name and also known as “Rám Ardshír,” i.e. “Happy Ardshír.”*

It was natural that he should, or be thought to, have founded a Fire-temple there, and this may be the origin of F's Rám in that connexion.

The account of Ardshír's battle with Bahman, son of Ardawán, is not in K.

§ 9. Firdausí's description of this battle is in his usual style. The corresponding passage in K may be read to indicate three battles or campaigns.*

It runs as follows:—“Then he (Ardshír) began war with Ardawán, slaughtered his whole army, and took from him his goods and chattels, houses, and property. Then he settled in Istakhr, and assembled from Kirmán, Makrán, Ispahán, and the different regions of Párs, a very great host. Then he began another war with Ardawán. For four months there were daily much fighting and slaughter. Ardawán collected from various regions—Rai, Damáwand, Dílamán,*

and Patash-wárgar *—

armies and horses; but as the Majesty of the Kaiánians had descended on Ardshír he was successful, killed Ardawán, and all his possessions came into Ardshír's hands. He took Ardawán's daughter to wife and went back to Pars.”*

§§ 10, 11. Here we have the account of an “unfortunate in­cident,” and shall meet, later on, with others that befell Ardshír after his triumph over Ardawán. He still had to fight hard to make good the title of “King of kings” conferred on him by his troops on the field of Hurmuzdagán.*

Naturally this would be so. A dynasty that had endured for centuries could not fail to have many adherents and dependants; Ardawán had left sons; Chosroes, the king of Armenia, was either his brother or at all events had been set on the throne by him; the Part Kings too had everything to lose by Ardshír's success, for it was manifest that he had no intention of leaving them in the semi-independent position that they had enjoyed under Parthian suzerainty; his view with regard to them was, as we have seen already, that “stone dead hath no fellow.”*

Ardshír followed up his success over Ardawán by striking at the heart of that king's power which, according to Íránian tradition, lay in Media, and here is recorded for us in the account of his expedition against the Kurds, by whom the people of Media are meant, for in K the name of the Kurd king is Mádík, which simply means “the Mede.”*

These, so far as Media Magna was concerned, Ardshír seems to have conquered, but Tabarí's statement that he subdued Ázarbáiján and Armenia appears to be an exaggeration. The case of Ázarbáijan is doubtful, but Armenia, whither some of the Arsacid princes had fled for refuge, succeeded with the help of Rome in maintaining its independence.*

§§ 12-16. To the exegesis of this strange story, as Firdausí calls it, three great authorities—Mohl, Darmesteter, and Nöldeke— have contributed. The two latter see reason to connect it with other more ancient Indo-European myths of dragons, such as Indra with Vritra, Apollo with the Python, &c., and Darmesteter quotes an interesting Scandinavian parallel which he considers more primitive and unaffected by industrialism:—“Le comte Herraudr a donné à sa fille, la belle Thora, un serpent qu'il a trouvé dans un œuf de vautour. Le serpent plaît à Thora qui lui fait un lit d'or dans un coffret. Le serpent grandit, l'or grandit avec lui, le coffre devient trop étroit pour lui, et même la maison de la jeune fille qu'il enveloppe de son corps. Il était méchant et malicieux: nul n'osait l'approcher que l'homme qui lui apportait chaque jour sa nourriture, consistant en un bœuf entier. Le comte promet sa fille et l'or à qui tuera le dragon. Ragnar, âgé de quinze ans, se fait un vêtement garni de poix (pour se garder du poison du serpent), surprend le monstre et le tue de la pointe de son épieu qu'il lui laisse dans la gueule. Il se retire sans dire son nom et plus tard se fait reconnaître publiquement au manche de son épieu: il reçoit Thora en mariage.”*

Still more to the point are Mohl's explanation and illustration, which are as follow:—“Je suis disposé à croire que ce conte est un vague souvenir de l'introduction du ver à soie en Perse et de la prospérité que cette nouvelle industrie devait avoir répandue. On me permettra peut-être de citer à l'appui de cette supposition un conte analogue et presque aussi étrange, qui date de nos jours. Je me rappelle avoir vu, il y a une trentaine d'années, au ministère du commerce, un rapport du préfet d'un des départements de la Bretagne au sujet de la détresse que répandait dans la campagne l'introduction du fil de lin produit par les machines, et de la difficulté que les fileuses à la main trouvaient à lutter contre cette concurrence. Le préfet raconte, à cette occasion, que ces pauvres femmes avaient fini par composer une légende, selon laquelle il y avait une fée, appelé Machine, qui avait sept doigts d'acier et pouvait ainsi filer plus et plus vite qu'elles ne pouvaient le faire avec leurs cinq doigts humains.”*

The full process of silk manufacture from the worm (Bombyx mori) to the finished fabric was known in China from time immemorial, and the secret was guarded very carefully. Long before the Christian era the raw silk had begun to be imported into Europe, and a famous manufactory for weaving it was estab­lished in the island of Cos in the Ægean Sea. The secret of the method of the production of the raw material itself was kept till much later times, sufficiently, at all events, for the maintenance of the Chinese monopoly, though Aristotle in his History of Animals, Bk. V., ch. xvii., sec. 6, ed. Schneider, speaks of a certain great worm with horns, as it were, which produces bom-bycina or cocoons which the women use in weaving. Aristotle's knowledge probably came to him as one of the results of Alexander's expedition to the East. The silk-worm itself, of which the secret had spread during the fourth century A.D. through India to Írán and the West, was brought for the first time into Europe by two Persian monks, at the special request of the Emperor Justinian, in A.D. 550. They smuggled the eggs from China in the hollow of a bamboo, and thus founded the Western silk industry. Justinian's object was to break the monopoly of the silk-trade then, by land and sea alike, in Persian hands.*

Two reasons may be suggested why the scene of our story was laid on the shores of the Persian sea. One is that a Part King of that region, e.g. of Hurmuz (Ormus), may have grown rapidly rich in the latter days of the Parthian dynasty by means of the silk or cotton trade of the Persian Gulf, and suffered for his prosperity at the hands of Ardshír Pápakán. The other is to be found in the popular etymology of the word Kirmán—a region more famous for its date (khurmá) than for its silk. In Persian, however, it so happens that “kirm” means “worm,” and in fact is the same word. Kirmán was supposed to mean “The Land of the Worm,” and thus to be a suitable scene for some ancient Dragon-myth,*

or a story may have been invented to account for the name. Both in K and F, it should be noted, Ardshír, after killing the Worm, proceeds to conquer Kirmán, so that we have the romantic and historic accounts of the same event put side by side, the former given at large and the latter very shortly. In Tabarí too we have the historic version and two brief rationalised versions of the romantic side of the story. He informs us that Ardshír subdued Kirmán, slew its king Balásh (Vologeses, an Arsacid), and made his own son ruler. This is represented as taking place before the war with Ardawán. Then (here begins one of the romantic versions) he went against a king named Astawadh, who lived on the coast of the Persian sea, and to whom divine honours were paid, killed him, cut him in two with his sword, slew also his retinue, and brought out from his treasure-house, and carried off, much treasure that was stored there.*

Astawadh, Professor Nöldeke notes, is a corruption by misreading of the Pahlaví name,*

which becomes Haftwád in the Sháhnáma. According to the other account there was in Alár, a village in the province of Kujárán, which belonged to the coast-land of Ardshír-Khurra (Gúr), a queen who enjoyed divine honours and possessed great wealth and many soldiers. Ardshír, toward the end of his reign, killed the queen and captured much gold and treasure which she had.*

In these accounts divine honours are transferred, in the first, from the dragon to Haftwád and, in the second, to his daughter.

§ 12. This passage is not found elsewhere, but there is no reason to assume that the poet invented, though very likely he embellished, it. From what we can gather of Firdausí's literary methods, he would not have introduced such a string of incidents without authority for so doing. When “gravelled for lack of matter,” he does not “take occasion to” invent, but passes on as we see in the case of the present dynasty, where he had an unequalled opportunity for the exercise of his imagination had he been disposed to avail himself of it. The absence of the passage in the Kárnámak and in the Arabic may be accounted for easily. In the former, Haftwád (Haftánbúkht) is introduced quite abruptly,*

and the story of his rise to power was omitted not because it was well known or unknown, but because it was foreign to the purpose in hand, which was to show by what steps Ardshír rose to supreme power, effected the unification of Írán, and founded a new dynasty. From this point of view the destruction of Haftwád and the Worm was of importance, but not their genesis. In the latter we have a much more drastic system of lopping in the interests, apparently, of rationalism. In the second of Tabarí's versions we get a hint that it was the one which, in its unrationalised state, Firdausí followed. The queen there is the daughter here.

The name of Ardshír's opponent in K—Haftánbúkht, which does not scan—becomes Haftwád in F, as it may be so read in the Pahlaví if the central letters are omitted. Haftánbúkht, according to Professor Nöldeke, means “The Seven have re­deemed” with reference to the seven planets which, as creations of Áhriman*

might be expected, from the orthodox Zoroastrian point of view, to watch over the fortunes of Haftánbúkht and the Worm. In Professor Darmesteter's opinion, however, Fir-dausí's etymology is correct, though based on a misapprehension. The word “wád” was due to a misreading of the Pahlaví, but the word “búkht” does mean “son,” and the seven sons are the sevenfold coils, or the seven heads, of the dragon. Both agree that in the original form of the story Haftánbúkht was the dragon.*

According to K, Haftánbúkht's seat was at Gulár in Kujárán. In Tabarí, Haftánbúkht becomes Astawadh, and Gulár, in the version which substitutes a queen for a king, becomes Alár.*

The situation of Kujárán is unknown.

In K the food of the dragon is the blood of sheep and bullocks,*

not rice, milk, and honey, as in F.

§ 13. In K the army of Haftánbúkht is represented as the aggressor. The forces of Ardshír, who is not present, are attacked after his return from his victory over the Kurds. This pre­liminary engagement is omitted by F. Haftwád's son crossed over from Arabia to help his father.*

The water behind Ardshír was probably the sea, but the Persian word is a vague one.

§ 14. In K the older form Mithrak is preserved. According to Tabarí, who places Ardshír's war with him before the defeat of Ardawán, he lived in a district of Ardshír-Khurra.”*

§ 15. In K Ardshír, after his defeat by Haftánbúkht, reaches the shore of the sea quite alone and almost abandoned by the divine Grace, but then it stood in front of him and led him out of danger to the village where the two brothers, named Burjak and Burjátur, dwelt.*

In K Ardshír gets admitted into the castle with the two young men of the village only. In F he takes seven men with him. Seven is a favourite number in Persian story, and if, as we have seen above, one of the legends told of Cyrus the Great could be transferred to Ardshír, there seems no reason why a fragment of the legend of the Seven, who made the famous expedition against the stronghold of the mage Gaumata—the false Smerdis—in the days of Darius Hystaspis, should not be transferred here in like manner.*

In K Ardshír appoints, for some reason not clear to us, the 27th day of the month as the one for decisive action, and Haftánbúkht appears to have perished in the fight, not afterwards by formal execution as in F.*