THE PRE-MUHAMMADAN LITERATURE OF THE PERSIANS, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THEIR LEGENDARY HISTORY, AS SET FORTH IN THE BOOK OF THE KINGS.

IN a book professing to treat of the literary history of any people in its entirety it would at first sight appear proper that A personal explanation. each period and manifestation of the national genius should, as far as possible, receive an equal amount of attention. In the case of Persia, however, a complete survey of the whole ground could only be made at first hand either by a combination of specialists working together (as has been done in the truly admirable Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie of Geiger and Kuhn, to which reference has already so often been made), or by a scholar of such varied and multiple attainments as can but rarely coexist in one man. Corresponding with the philo­logical divisions already laid down, we have four separate literatures (though one is perhaps too scanty and limited in extent and character to deserve this title) which may fairly be called “Persian”: to wit:—

(i) The Old Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions of the Achæ-menian kings.

(ii) The Avesta (or rather the fragments of it which we still possess), including the more ancient Gáthás, written in a different and more archaic dialect, and believed by many to date from Zoroaster's own time.

(iii) The Pahlawí literature, including the contemporary Sásánian Inscriptions.

(iv) The post-Muhammadan, or “Modern Persian” litera­ture of the last thousand years, which alone is usually under­stood as “Persian Literature.”

To this last we must also add, for reasons advanced in Chap. I (pp. 3-4 supra),—

(v) That large portion of Arabic literature produced by Persians.

Now, of the three more ancient languages and literatures above mentioned I can claim only a superficial and second-hand knowledge, since the study of Modern Persian and Arabic is amply sufficient to occupy even the most active mind for a life-time. The other literatures lie quite apart, and primarily require quite different qualifications. For the student of Old Persian and Avestic a good knowledge of Sanskrit is essential, while a knowledge of Arabic, Muhammadan theology, and the like is of quite secondary importance. For the study of the first, moreover, a knowledge of Assyrian, and for the second, of Pahlawí, is desirable; while Pahlawí, in turn, cannot be fruit­fully studied save by one well-versed in the Aramaic languages, especially Syriac and Chaldæan. Wherefore, since it behoves an author to write of what he knows at first hand, and since my knowledge of the pre-Muhammadan languages and litera­tures of Persia is only such as (with the desire of extending and completing, as far as possible, my view of the people whose later history is my chosen study) I have derived from the writings of experts, I would gladly have confined the scope of this book to the post-Muhammadan period, whereon alone I have any claim to speak with authority. Yet since every increase of knowledge makes one feel how much greater than one had supposed is the continuity of a nation's history and thought, and how much weaker are the dividing lines which once seemed so clear, I could not bring myself to mislead such as may read my book as to the true scope and unity of the subject by such artificial and unnatural circumscription. I began my Oriental studies with Turkish, and was soon driven to Persian, since from the Persians the Turks borrowed their culture and literary forms. Soon I found that without a knowledge of the Arabic language and literature and of the Arabian civilisation and culture one could never hope to be more than a smatterer in Persian. Still I thought of the Arab conquest of Persia and the conversion of the bulk of the Persians to the religion of Islám as a definite and satisfactory starting-point, as an event of such magnitude and of so revolutionary a character that it might fairly be regarded as creating practically a tabula rasa, from which all earlier writing had been expunged. But gradually it became apparent that this conception was very far from the truth; that many phenomena of the complex 'Abbásid civilisation, of the early religious history of Islám, of the Book and Teaching of the Arabian Prophet himself, could only be understood in the light of earlier history.* Inevitably one is carried back from Muhammadan to Sásánian times, from Sásánian to Parthian, Achæmenian, Medic, Assyrian, primitive Aryan, and I know not what besides, until one is fain to exclaim with the Persian poet:—

Marā-i khiradmand-i-hunar-písha-rá
'Umr du báyast dar-ín rúzgár,
Tá bi-yakí tajriba ámúkhtí,
Dar digarí tajriba burdí bi-kár!

“The man of parts who after wisdom strives
Should have on earth at least a brace of lives;
In one experience he then might learn,
And in the next that same to profit turn!”

Therefore, unwilling on the one hand to speak much of matters wherein I have but little skill, and on the other to produce what I should regard as an essentially defective and misleading book, false to my conception of what is meant by the Literary History of a people, and faulty not only in execution but in conception, I have decided to set forth briefly in this chapter the main facts about the Achæmenian Inscrip­tions, the Avesta, the Pahlawí monuments and literature, and the Zoroastrian religion, to know which is important even for those whose main interest lies in Modern Persian. Of the Sásánian period, and therefore incidentally of Pahlawí, the official language of that time in Persia, I shall speak in greater detail in the next chapter, since in it lie the roots of so much that attracts our attention in the early Muhammadan days, and the gulf which severs it from what precedes is so much harder to bridge satisfactorily than that which divides it from what follows. And since, for literary purposes, the legendary is nearly as important as the actual history of a people, I shall also discuss in this chapter the Persian Epos or National Legend, which, as will be seen, only approaches the real National History at the beginning of the Sásánian period. This chapter will therefore be divided into four sections, which may be briefly characterised as follows: (1) Achæmenian; (2) Avestic; (3) Pahlawí; and (4) National Legend.

Our fullest knowledge of that first great Persian dynasty which began with Cyrus in B.C. 559, and ended with the defeat of the last Darius by Alexander, and his tragic death at the hands of his two treacherous satraps, Bessus and Barzaëntes, in B.C. 330, is derived from Greek historians, notably Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon (Anabasis, Cyropœdia, Agesilaus), while some sidelights may be derived from such works as the Persœ of Æschylus. Of these external sources, however, which have been fully used by those who have written the history of the Achæmenians (such as Rawlinson, Spiegel, and Justi), I do not propose to speak further, since they lie rather in the domain of the classical scholar than of the Orientalist. Raw-linson, however, in his admirable translation of Herodotus, points out how much the authority of that great historian is strengthened, not only by the Achæmenian inscriptions, but also by the true and convincing portraits of the national cha­racter which his work contains. But for him, indeed, the inscriptions, even if deciphered, must have remained obscure in many points which by his help are clear, as, for example, the words in ll. 8-11 of the first portion of Darius's great Behistun inscription: “Saith Darius the king: ‘Eight of my race who were aforetime were kings; I am the ninth: we are kings by double descent” [or, “in a double line”]. In the light of the following genealogical tree deducible from Herodotus (Polymnia, vii, 10) the meaning of this becomes evident:—

<genealogy>

Ordinarily, of course, Cyrus (B.C. 559-529) is reckoned the first king of the line; his son Cambyses (B.C. 529-522) the second, and Darius (B.C. 521-485) the third; but Darius himself counts his own ancestors up to Achæmenes, as well as the three kings (for he evidently includes Cambyses the father of Cyrus as well as Cambyses the son) of the collateral branch, and so the meanings of duvitátaranam, “in a double line” (it was formerly translated “from a very ancient time”), and of Darius's “I am the ninth” become perfectly plain.