The Sháh, being disquieted by a dream, sends emissaries through the empire to find an interpreter. One is discovered at Marv in the person of Búzurjmihr, then a youth, who having been brought before the Sháh interprets the dream and is advanced to great honour. The Sháh subsequently gives a series of entertainments at which discussions on wisdom and morals are substituted for the usual diversions of Oriental banquets, and Búzurjmihr again greatly distinguishes himself.

Persia, like other nations, has its Wisdom-literature. This com­prises apologues, apothegms, proverbs, parables, the interpretation of dreams and dark sentences, astrological forecasts, the solution of problems, the supplying the correct answer to questions relating to religion, morals, conduct, and expediency, and longer discourses thereon, reflections on fate and fortune, on the uncertainty of all terrestrial affairs, on the vanity of striving after wealth and fame, and the importance of leaving behind one a good name after death. All these forms of wisdom find expression in the Sháhnáma, and the poet himself has been not backward in contributing his quota. At the first available opportunity in his work he utters his “Praise of Wisdom”—the first created of God and His best gift to man.*

A collection of all the passages dealing with such themes and subjects as are mentioned above, and including Firdausí's own reflections on such matters, as have occurred in the poem up to this point, would amount to something considerable, but scattered through a mass of narrative they are apt to be overlooked. In this reign, however, we are confronted by formal collections of primitive Persian Wisdom associated for the most part with the name of Búzurjmihr but to some extent with other great officials and with Núshírwán himself. Firdausí availed himself of the opportunity of the conjunction of the just Sháh with the wise counsellor to bring together all that he could find in his authorities and elsewhere on some of the subjects mentioned at the beginning of this note. That a large Pahlaví literature once existed on such matters, and arranged sometimes in the form of question and answer, we know from what is extant. Thus the sage in the “Díná-í Maínóg-í Khirad” (“Opinions of the Spirit of Wisdom”) consults the Spirit of Wisdom on sixty-two points and receives answers, e.g. “The sage asked the spirit of wisdom thus: ‘Which man is the mightier?’ … The spirit of wisdom answered thus: ‘That man is the mightier who is able to struggle with his own fiends; and, in particular, he who keeps these five fiends far from his person, which are such as greediness, wrath, lust, disgrace, and discontent.’”*

The concluding question is: “Which is that good work which is greater and better than all good works, and no trouble whatever is necessary for its per­formance?” The answer is: “To be grateful in the world, and to wish happiness for every one. This is greater and better than every good work, and no commotion whatever is necessary for its per­formance.” *

These questions and answers are quite of a piece with the sages' gnomes in the poem. There are also extant in Pahlaví the “Pandnámak-í Vadshórg-Mitró-í Búkhtakán” or “Bakhtagán,” i.e. the “Book of Counsels of Búzurjmihr the son of Bakhtagán,” the “Characteristics of a Happy Man,” and other texts dealing with similar subjects.*

There can be no doubt but that Firdausí derived the sententious, gnomic, parenetic, or whatever one chooses to call them, portions of the Sháhnáma, like the narrative, indirectly from the Pahlaví. Four series of such passages occur in the present reign. The first and longest is in the present Part. The second is Búzurjmihr's Discourse on good deeds and works in Part III. The third is Núshírwán's answers to the questions addressed to him by the archmages. The fourth is the vivû voce examination that Hurmuzd, Núshírwán's son, has to pass at the hands of Búzurjmihr, by order of the Sháh, before being nominated as his father's suc­cessor. One cannot help feeling a sneaking sympathy, reprehensible though it be, with him when we find him signalising his advent to the throne by making a clean sweep of his father's ministers from whose “wise saws and modern instances” doubtlessly he had suffered much in the days of his youth. Nero acted similarly in the case of Burrus and the younger Seneca. Of these four series the third is concerned only partly with Wisdom-literature, some of the questions dealing with Núshírwán's own conduct on specified occasions. This and the fourth series will appear in Volume VIII.

Búzurjmihr, the son of Bakhtagán, of Marv, the man chiefly associated with the Wisdom-literature of the Sháhnáma, is but a semi-historical figure hardly mentioned by any historian before Firdausí's time with the exception of Mas'údí who died when the poet was a youth. Mas'údí gives twelve maxims of Búzurjmihr's and little else,*

so that practically we are dependent on what Firdausí tells us, and this, with regard to the incidents recorded, generally has something of the præternatural about it. Bú-zurjmihr's career begins with a dream, and while sleeping on his journey to the court a snake, which seems an Arab rather than a Persian touch, comes and breathes over him. Moreover, his fall from power is preceded by an omen and his restoration to favour accomplished by another. We never hear of him as being associated with any of Núshírwán's great achievements in adminis­tration or in war. He is employed, it is true, upon two missions, once to expound a game—chess—and to propound another of his own invention—nard—and once to negotiate in time of war a loan for his master, which falls through owing to the fact that Núshírwán has a higher conception of the dignity of the office of the scribe than Búzurjmihr himself. His repute seems largely due to Firdausí, who used him as a peg whereon to hang all the old clothes of the Wisdom-literature that the poet was too con­scientious to discard but could not dispose of elsewhere. There is, however, a thanksgiving couplet to testify that he was not sorry when the worst of his task was over.*

If the number seven were not such a favourite in Persian story one might suggest that the Seven Banquets of Núshírwán originated in a perverted reminiscence of the seven Greek philosophers who were entertained for a while at his court when Justinian closed the schools of Athens,*

and that Búzurjmihr himself is not much more than a native composite reproduction of those hapless and disillusioned sages.

Mohl has some apposite remarks on the Wisdom-literature:

“Ce qui a le plus contribué à la gloire du règne de Nouschirwan, c'est la réputation de son vizir, Buzurdjmihr, qui est en Orient le représentant de toute la sagesse humaine, comme Nouschirwan lui-même est la représentation de la justice. On les a entourés tous les deux d'une auréole de fables, et l'on a mis sous leurs noms tous les contes qui se rattachent par leur nature à la renommée particulière de chacun. On a donc attribué à Buzurdjmihr tous les traits de sagesse et toutes les moralités qu'on a pu trouver, et Firdousi les rapporte au long les uns et les autres. Quant aux moralités, le poëte avait évidemment découvert quelques collections où on les avait réunies, et il nous en donne à trois reprises différentes, ou des traductions complètes, ou d'amples extraits. Je crois que les originaux ont dû être composés en pehlewi, et que ces sentences out éprouvé quelque dommage, soit de la part des copistes, soit de celle des traducteurs, car les questions et les réponses ne paraissent pas toujours s'accorder suffisamment. De plus, les copistes du Livre des Rois on évidemment été arrêtés par le texte et ont fait pour le redresser beaucoup d'effort mal-heureux… Il est très-probable encore que les sentences que nous trouvons dans les moralistes arabes et persans sont des restes de cette antique sagesse des Perses. Les observations et les règles qu'elles contiennent nous paraissent en général bien simples et parfois bien puériles; mais cela même parle pour leur origine reculée. Elles ont été une fois neuves et frappantes et ont été transmises aux nouvelles générations, entourées du respect qu'-inspire en toute chose la réputation d'antiquité. Ce n'est certaine-ment pas dans une monarchie comme celle de la Perse sous Nouschirwan, que commençait à tomber de vétusté, qu'on avait besoin d'inventer des moralités élémentaires.”*

On the same subject Nöldeke says: “In the discourses on wisdom and riddles which take up so much space in the story of the first Chosrau (Kisrâ) are probably to be found many duplicates of whole passages; to settle these questions much material besides the Sháhnáma is available, but truly to investigate these wearying fragments would require an unusual amount of patience!”*