DOCSLIB.ORG

MIDDLE PERSIAN XUASTAN Although the Middle Persian (MP

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
MIDDLE PERSIAN XUASTAN Although the Middle Persian (MP MIDDLE PERSIAN XUASTAN Although the Middle Persian (MP) verb xuastan: xuah- ‘(1) to wish, desire; (2) to call, summon; (3) to ask, demand; (4) to seek, search' belongs to the basic lexical stock of that language, its etymology is still obscure. Nyberg in his Manual1 limits himself to proposing as its origin the hypothetical Old Iranian root *hvaz- and does not adduce any Old Indian counterpart for it. His commentless reference to the two other scholars, Bailey2 and Henning3, who dealt with this problem before him and proposed two mutually excluding explanations indicates that he regarded it as not yet definitively solved. To this author's knowledge no new attempts at an explanation of this word have been made after the publication of Nyberg's book. Bailey's proposal to derive both the MP verb in question and its cognates in other Middle and Modern Iranian languages (including the north-western forms with present stem in -z-) from OInd. svad-, svadate, svatta- ‘be sweet, please; relish, enjoy'4 repeats Horn's etymology of New Persian (NP) xvastan given in the latter's etymological dictionary5 published before the Turfan discoveries. After the linguistic materials discovered there brought to light the important differences between the south-western and north-western Middle Iranian dialects, the phonetic contrast between MP xuast: xuah- and its Parthian counterpart uxast: uxaz- made Horn's etymology implausible. Its chief difficulty lies in it not explaining why the Parthian verb did not follow the regular pat- tern of development of d-roots as exemplified by, e.g., the Parthian verb }mb}st: }mbd- ‘zusammenstürzen' (from *ham-pad-, cf. Turfan MP hmb}stn: hmbh-)6 or the substantive p}d ‘foot' (OP. pada-, Av. pada-)7. 1 H.S. NYBERG, A Manual of Pahlavi (abbrev. Manual), Part II Glossary, Wiesbaden 1974, p. 222-223 s.v. 2 H.W. BAILEY, To the Zamasp-Namak, in BSOS VII, 1930-32, p. 74. 3 W. HENNING, Das Verbum des Mittelpersischen der Turfanfragmente (abbrev. Ver- bum), in ZII 1933, p. 187 (= AI [Acta Iranica] 14, 1977, 94), s.v. *xvaz-. 4 C. CAPPELLER, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Strassburg 1891, p. 649 s.v. 5 P. HORN, Grundriß der neupersischen Etymologie, Strassburg 1893, p. 110, Nr 497. 6 ANDREAS - HENNING, Mitteliranische Manichaica aus Chinesisch-Turkestan, III, in SPAW, 1934, p. 894 (= AI 4, 1977, p. 321); cf. A GHILAIN, Essai sur la langue parthe, Louvain-Leuven 1939, p. 53. 7 M. BOYCE, A Word-List of Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian, in AI 9a, 1977, p. 66 s.v. 78 W. SKALMOWSKI Although Bailey in his article does not discuss the *xuaz-forms in detail, the fact that he quotes them next to his explanation of MP xuah- makes it obvious that he regards them as special variants of the root *svad- with -z- representing the spirantized -d-. Henning has chosen the oppo- site approach.8 His proposal may be recapitulated as follows: the Parthian stem in -z- represents the original Iranian root *xvaz-, while MP xuah- developed via an intermediate dialectal *xuad- in which the dental spirant had evolved from the original voiced sibilant. Although Henning does not specify the Indo-European origin of the proposed root *xvaz-, his reference to the supposedly analogical development in MP ray- ‘ordnen' (according to him representing rad = Ir. raz from the IE root *reg)9 indicates that he regarded the Parthian -z- in the discussed word as a continuant of IE *-g- and, consequently, as a counterpart of OInd. -j-. However, since the only Indian verb which corresponds phonetically to the postulated Iranian *xvaz-, namely OInd. svaj-, svajate, svakta-, means only ‘embrace, encircle'10 Henning's explanation must be rejected on semantic grounds. This paper proposes a solution which is not only in clear agreement with the semantic nuances of the MP xuastan but also explains the phonetic difference between the northern and southern forms of its present stem in a natural way. According to this author the Aryan verb from which MP xuastan was derived was a haplologically shortened compound consisting of the reflexive-possessive pronoun OIr. hva, OInd. sva ‘one's own, one's self' and of the causative of the IE verbal root *uegh- (Av. vaz- ‘fahren'11, OInd. vah-, vahati ‘conduct, carry', causative vahayati / vahayate ‘cause to conduct; guide, drive'12). In the Indian garb the proposed reconstruction would have the form *sva-vahayate > *svahayate and would mean approximately ‘to let 8 Henning's explanation has been repeated without comment by A. GHILAIN, op. cit., p. 69 s.v. xvaz-. 9 W. HENNING, Verbum, l.c., s.v. raz-. Actually, for phonetic and semantic reasons, MP rayen- ‘ordnen', rast ‘gerade, recht', NP payrastan: payray- ‘ausschmücken' should be derived from Ir. *rad-, OInd. radh-, radhnoti ‘succeed; accomplish', caus. radhayati ‘bring about, satisfy', s. C. CAPPELLER, op. cit. p. 448; cf. especially the past participle raddha- ‘accomplished, ready, perfect' (ibid. s.v.). Consequently one cannot regard these forms — as Henning did — as cognates of NP afraxtan/afrastan: afraz- ‘erheben' which represents the IE *reg-, OInd. rajati, cf. P. HORN, op. cit. p. 22, Nr 93. 10 C. CAPPELLER, op. cit. p. 649 s.v. 11 Chr. BARTHOLOMAE, Altiranisches Wörterbuch, Strassburg 1904, col. 1386 s.v. 12 C. CAPPELLER, op. cit. p. 480f, s.v. vah-. MIDDLE PERSIAN XUASTAN 79 (somebody/something) come/move toward oneself'; cf. the actual OInd causative (with the preposition a- ‘to, towards') avahayati/-te ‘to call near, to invite'. The Iranian forms of this verb perfectly account for the difference between the MP and Parthian present stems: OP *h(va)va- dayatai/-ti must result in MP xuahed (cf. MP dahed from *dadayati) while north-western Iranian *h(va)vazayatai (cf. Av. vazaite ‘dahin- fährt') accounts for the Parth. ux'z-. According to this etymological hypothesis the semantic structure of MP xuastan resembles that of Latin sub-monere and thus its original meaning should have been ‘to summon (somebody), to strive (after something)'. This sense is indeed still well preserved in Book Pahlavi. The following examples may serve as illustrations: Kn. I,12 (s. Manual 2, 2-3:)13 u-s danagan ud xwamn-wizaran o pes xwast, ‘and he summoned the sages and the interpreters of dreams'; Kn. III,4 (s. Manual 5, 6) roz-e Ardawan danagan ud axtarmaran … o pes xwast ud pursid, ‘one day A. summoned the sages and the astrologers and asked'; Kn. IV,1 (s. Manual 6, 25) ka roz bud Ardawan kanizag xwast ud kanizag pad gyag ne bud, ‘when day(light) came A. summoned/ called the girl and the girl was not at (her) place'; Kn. IV,5 (s. Manual 7, 3) u-s axtarmaran sardar xwast ud guft, ‘and he summoned the chief of the astrologers and said'. As is shown by the last two examples, the prepositional phrase o pes lit. ‘to the front/before (oneself)' is not an obligatory part of a sentence with xwastan, apparently because the indication of direction was already inherent in the original OP *h(va)-vad-tanaiy. lit. ‘to let come/move toward oneself'. The use of this phrase in the first two examples was probably influenced by sentences in which the discussed verb was applied in the already enlarged sense ‘call, summon (somewhere)', a generalization requiring an explicit specification of the goal as, e.g., in o dar xuast ‘he was summoned to the court'.14 The meaning ‘to wish, desire' which was originally expressed in MP by the verb kamistan: kam- must have developed gradually through the 13 The division of the text of Kn. (= Karnamak i Artaxser i Papakan) into chapters and sections follows E.K. Antia's edition (Bombay 1900); the transcribed sections were taken from: O.M. CUNAKOVA, Kniga dejanij Ardasira syna Papaka, Moskva 1987; the corresponding passages in Nyberg's Manual, I, in parantheses. 14 s. Manual, I, p. 109,2. 80 W. SKALMOWSKI intermediary sense ‘to seek, search, look for'.15 This last sense is well visible in the following Parthian example: (M 572 V.) cw}gwn hw smn qnycg wx}st }ws gwrg wynd}d, ‘So wie jener Mönch das Mädchen suchte und den Wolf fand'.16 The final stage of the semantic development towards the meaning ‘to wish' which later became dominant in NP xvastan must have been the growing stress on the performative aspect of the act of ‘seeking', i.e., on the means providing the desired result (‘demanding, asking, praying') as may by seen in another Parthian example: (M 177 V.) kwm }}g}dg cym }c hw wx}st … [hwyc pdgryft], ‘(because) my wish, which-by-me was asked of him … [by-him-indeed was accep- ted]'.17 Although no actual form of the here proposed hypothetical OIr. compound *h(va)vadaya- is attested in the surviving Old Persian and Avestan texts, it appears to be a better candidate for the etymon of MP xuastan than the phonetically and semantically unsuitable OInd. svad- or the phantomlike ‘root' *hvaz-. Kruisdagenlaan 103 W. SKALMOWSKI B-1200 Brussel 15 The semantic difference between these two verbs (‘passive' wishing vs. ‘active' seeking) has also been reflected in the choice of Aramaic roots underlying their hetero- grams: Y∑BHn-stn' (Aram. Ò-b-h ‘to wish, want') for kamistan vs. B`YÎWN-stn' (Aram. b-`-Ì ‘to search, seek, ask, pray') for xuastan, s. Manual, II, p. 111 and 221, resp., and F. ROSENTHAL, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, Wiesbaden 1968, s.vv. 16 W. SUNDERMANN, Mittelpersische und parthische kosmogonische und Parabeltexte der Manichäer, Berlin 1973, p. 93, §27, l.1823-4 (Sundermann's translation). 17 M. BOYCE, A Reader in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian, in AI 9, § g, 2 (Boyce's translation)..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Dēnkard III Language Variation and the Defence of Socio-Religious Identity in the Context of Early-Islamic Iran
    Open Linguistics 2017; 3: 396–418 Research Article Gianfilippo Terribili* Dēnkard III Language Variation and the Defence of Socio-Religious Identity in the Context of Early-Islamic Iran https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2017-0020 Received January 25, 2017; accepted August 10, 2017 Abstract: The aim of the present paper is to illustrate as a case study, the linguistic and stylistic peculiarities characterizing the third book of the Dēnkard, one of the most authoritative texts in Zoroastrian Pahlavi literature (9th-10 th CE). The analysis will consider these features as part of a coherent system, styled to serve the dialectic strategies pursued by the Zoroastrian high priests in response to the pressures their own community was facing in the early Islamic period. In order to provide a more comprehensive overview on DkIII language distinctiveness, the research will underline the outward/inward dynamics, addressing both the relation of this theological dialectic with the surrounding socio-cultural environment and the leading- role claims of a group within a politically subordinated community. Keywords: Middle Persian, Pahlavi Literature, Iranian Philology 1 Introduction In tune with the present volume, seeking to integrate linguistic data concerning a specific text within the socio-cultural dynamics of the period in which a specific textual production flourished, may yield extremely interesting elements for scholars aiming to survey the development of broader acculturation processes. Within Iranian history, the early Islamic period offers a very rich field of investigation for sociolinguistic studies; the abundance of sources in our possession is in fact due to the activity of the multifaceted constituents of that society, while the presence of various and interacting agents offers a remarkable opportunity to adopt multiple point of views.
    [Show full text]
  • Classical Persian Literature Bahman Solati (Ph.D), 2015 University of California, Berkeley [email protected]
    Classical Persian Literature Bahman Solati (Ph.D), 2015 University of California, Berkeley [email protected] Introduction Studying the roots of a particular literary history enables us to better understand the allusions the literature transmits and why we appreciate them. It also allows us to foresee how the literature may progress.1 I will try to keep this attitude in the reader’s mind in offering this brief summary of medieval Persian literature, a formidable task considering the variety and wealth of the texts and documentation on the subject.2 In this study we will pay special attention to the development of the Persian literature over the last millennia, focusing in particular on the initial development and background of various literary genres in Persian. Although the concept of literary genres is rather subjective and unstable,3 reviewing them is nonetheless a useful approach for a synopsis, facilitating greater understanding, deeper argumentation, and further speculation than would a simple listing of dates, titles, and basic biographical facts of the giants of Persian literature. Also key to literary examination is diachronicity, or the outlining of literary development through successive generations and periods. Thriving Persian literature, undoubtedly shaped by historic events, lends itself to this approach: one can observe vast differences between the Persian literature of the tenth century and that of the eleventh or the twelfth, and so on.4 The fourteenth century stands as a bridge between the previous and the later periods, the Mongol and Timurid, followed by the Ṣafavids in Persia and the Mughals in India. Given the importance of local courts and their support of poets and writers, it is quite understandable that literature would be significantly influenced by schools of thought in different provinces of the Persian world.5 In this essay, I use the word literature to refer to the written word adeptly and artistically created.
    [Show full text]
  • The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy
    Book Review The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy. Edited by Khaled El-Rouayheb and Sabine Schmidtke. Oxford Handbooks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 720 pp. ISBN 978-0-19991-738-9. Price: $175 (cloth). Coleman Connelly Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University ([email protected]) he modern academic study of and wrote in Arabic, New Persian, Ottoman philosophy in the Islamic world Turkish, and other languages were in has, since its nineteenth-century dialogue with a tradition inaugurated in Tinception, privileged works written in this formative century. Arabic from the ninth to the twelfth Yet the focus on the ninth through centuries. To some extent, this focus twelfth centuries has rested on several far makes intellectual-historical sense. For less defensible assumptions as well. First, one thing, the period hinges on the European and Middle Eastern scholars floruit of an inarguably central figure, alike have long designated the first two the philosopher and scientist Avicenna centuries of the Abbasid caliphate as a (d. 428/1037). For another, if origins are “Golden Age” or a “classical period” of important, the ninth century certainly “Islamic civilization.”1 Scholarship has deserves scholars’ attention. Philosophy unduly privileged philosophy in this (falsafa) performed in Arabic by self- period and in its immediate aftermath just identified philosophers living in Islamic as it has privileged the period’s theology, lands begins only in the ninth century, science, belles-lettres, historiography, and a movement in part conditioned by and other fields of literary production. Second, in part conditioning the translation of scholars writing in European languages Aristotle and other ancient Greek authors long labored under the nineteenth- into Arabic, sometimes via Syriac Aramaic century theory that the twelfth-century or, less commonly, Middle Persian.
    [Show full text]
  • The Persian-Toledan Astronomical Connection and the European Renaissance
    Academia Europaea 19th Annual Conference in cooperation with: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, Ministerio de Cultura (Spain) “The Dialogue of Three Cultures and our European Heritage” (Toledo Crucible of the Culture and the Dawn of the Renaissance) 2 - 5 September 2007, Toledo, Spain Chair, Organizing Committee: Prof. Manuel G. Velarde The Persian-Toledan Astronomical Connection and the European Renaissance M. Heydari-Malayeri Paris Observatory Summary This paper aims at presenting a brief overview of astronomical exchanges between the Eastern and Western parts of the Islamic world from the 8th to 14th century. These cultural interactions were in fact vaster involving Persian, Indian, Greek, and Chinese traditions. I will particularly focus on some interesting relations between the Persian astronomical heritage and the Andalusian (Spanish) achievements in that period. After a brief introduction dealing mainly with a couple of terminological remarks, I will present a glimpse of the historical context in which Muslim science developed. In Section 3, the origins of Muslim astronomy will be briefly examined. Section 4 will be concerned with Khwârizmi, the Persian astronomer/mathematician who wrote the first major astronomical work in the Muslim world. His influence on later Andalusian astronomy will be looked into in Section 5. Andalusian astronomy flourished in the 11th century, as will be studied in Section 6. Among its major achievements were the Toledan Tables and the Alfonsine Tables, which will be presented in Section 7. The Tables had a major position in European astronomy until the advent of Copernicus in the 16th century. Since Ptolemy’s models were not satisfactory, Muslim astronomers tried to improve them, as we will see in Section 8.
    [Show full text]
  • Astrology and Religion in the Zoroastrian Pahlavi Texts*
    Astrology anD Religion in the Zoroastrian Pahlavi TeXts* ENRICO G. RAFFAELLI Abstract This article overviews the references to astrology found in the Zoroastrian religious texts in Middle Persian (or Pahlavi) dating from the Sasanian period to the 10th century. Through their analysis, it highlights how astrology was integrated in the Zoro- astrian doctrinal corpus from the Sasanian times to the early Islamic period. The basic view underlying the astrological refer- ences in the Pahlavi texts, is that the good astral entities (which include the zodiacal constellations, the sun, and the moon), fight against the evil astral entities (which include planets and lunar nodes). The main astrological doctrines documented in these texts are that of the horoscope of birth of the world and of Gayōmard (the first man), the astrological explanation of the death of Gayōmard at age 30, the millenary chronocratoria, that is, the rule over time, of zodiacal constellations and of Saturn, and the melothesia, that is, the attribution of the parts of the body, to celestial entities. The article argues that these doctrines express the Zoroastrian view that the malefic influence of the evil astral bodies contributes to the pollution characterizing the present state of existence of the world. The article also touches upon astrological doctrines documented in Zoroastrian New Persian texts. Keywords: Astrology – Sasanian Zoroastrianism – Early Islamic Zoroastrianism –– Avesta – Pahlavi literature – Zand litera- ture – Magi– Zurvanism – Horoscope of the world – Chronocratoria – Melothesia – New Persian Literature INTRODUCTION These two groups of texts are the only direct sources of information about the interaction between astrology and This article focuses on the way in which astrology Zoroastrian theology in the Sasanian period, and in the was integrated into the corpus of the Zoroastrian doc- first centuries following it3.
    [Show full text]
  • Mecusi Geleneğinde Tektanrıcılık Ve Düalizm Ilişkisi
    T.C. İSTANBUL ÜN İVERS İTES İ SOSYAL B İLİMLER ENST İTÜSÜ FELSEFE VE D İN B İLİMLER İ ANAB İLİM DALI DİNLER TAR İHİ B İLİM DALI DOKTORA TEZ İ MECUS İ GELENE Ğİ NDE TEKTANRICILIK VE DÜAL İZM İLİŞ KİSİ Mehmet ALICI (2502050181) Tez Danı şmanı: Prof.Dr. Şinasi GÜNDÜZ İstanbul 2011 T.C. İSTANBUL ÜN İVERS İTES İ SOSYAL B İLİMLER ENST İTÜSÜ FELSEFE VE D İN B İLİMLER İ ANAB İLİM DALI DİNLER TAR İHİ B İLİM DALI DOKTORA TEZ İ MECUS İ GELENE Ğİ NDE TEKTANRICILIK VE DÜAL İZM İLİŞ KİSİ Mehmet ALICI (2502050181) Tez Danı şmanı: Prof.Dr. Şinasi GÜNDÜZ (Bu tez İstanbul Üniversitesi Bilimsel Ara ştırma Projeleri Komisyonu tarafından desteklenmi ştir. Proje numarası:4247) İstanbul 2011 ÖZ Bu çalı şma Mecusi gelene ğinde tektanrıcılık ve düalizm ili şkisini ortaya çıkı şından günümüze kadarki tarihsel süreç içerisinde incelemeyi hedef edinir. Bu ba ğlamda Mecusilik üç temel teolojik süreç çerçevesinde ele alınmaktadır. Bu ba ğlamda birinci teolojik süreçte Mecusili ğin kurucusu addedilen Zerdü şt’ün kendisine atfedilen Gatha metninde tanrı Ahura Mazda çerçevesinde ortaya koydu ğu tanrı tasavvuru incelenmektedir. Burada Zerdü şt’ün anahtar kavram olarak belirledi ği tanrı Ahura Mazda ve onunla ili şkilendirilen di ğer ilahi figürlerin ili şkisi esas alınmaktadır. Zerdü şt sonrası Mecusi teolojisinin şekillendi ği Avesta metinleri ikinci teolojik süreci ihtiva etmektedir. Bu dönem Zerdü şt’ten önceki İran’ın tanrı tasavvurlarının yeniden kutsal metne yani Avesta’ya dahil edilme sürecini yansıtmaktadır. Dolayısıyla Avesta edebiyatı Zerdü şt sonrası dönü şen bir teolojiyi sunmaktadır. Bu noktada ba şta Ahura Mazda kavramı olmak üzere, Zerdü şt’ün Gatha’da ortaya koydu ğu mefhumların de ğişti ği görülmektedir.
    [Show full text]
  • Flights of Imagination: Avicenna's Phoenix (ʿanqā) and Bedil's
    JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY 2 (2019) 28–72 brill.com/saih Flights of Imagination: Avicenna’s Phoenix (ʿAnqā) and Bedil’s Figuration for the Lyric Self Jane Mikkelson Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA [email protected] Abstract The phoenix (ʿanqā) appears in the philosophy of Avicenna (d.1037) as his example of a “vain intelligible,” a fictional being that exists in the soul, but not in the world. This remarkable bird is notable (along with the Earth, the moon, the sun, and God) for being a species of one. In this essay, I read the poetry Bedil of Delhi (d.1720) in conver- sation with the philosophical system of Avicenna, arguing that the phoenix in Bedil’s own philosophical system functions as a key figuration that allows him simultaneous- ly to articulate rigorous impersonal systematic ideas and to document his individual first-personal experiences of those ideas. The phoenix also plays a metaliterary role, allowing Bedil to reflect on this way of doing philosophy in the first person—a method founded on the lyric enrichment of Avicennan rationalism. Paying attention to the adjacencies between poetry and philosophy in Bedil, this essay traces the phoenix’s transformations from a famous philosophical example into one of Bedil’s most striking figurations in his arguments about imagination, mind, and self. Keywords lyric poetry – phoenix – Bedil – Avicenna – philosophy and literature – imagination – self ∵ © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/25425552-12340012Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 12:48:03PM via free access Flights of Imagination 29 Mī-dān kih zamānah naqsh-i saudā-st bīrūn zi zamānah ṣūrat-i mā-st zīrā qafas-ī-st īn zamānah bīrūn hamah kūh-i qāf u ʿanqā-st Understand: time is an image of melancholy.
    [Show full text]
  • Abstracts Electronic Edition
    Societas Iranologica Europaea Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the State Hermitage Museum Russian Academy of Sciences Abstracts Electronic Edition Saint-Petersburg 2015 http://ecis8.orientalstudies.ru/ Eighth European Conference of Iranian Studies. Abstracts CONTENTS 1. Abstracts alphabeticized by author(s) 3 A 3 B 12 C 20 D 26 E 28 F 30 G 33 H 40 I 45 J 48 K 50 L 64 M 68 N 84 O 87 P 89 R 95 S 103 T 115 V 120 W 125 Y 126 Z 130 2. Descriptions of special panels 134 3. Grouping according to timeframe, field, geographical region and special panels 138 Old Iranian 138 Middle Iranian 139 Classical Middle Ages 141 Pre-modern and Modern Periods 144 Contemporary Studies 146 Special panels 147 4. List of participants of the conference 150 2 Eighth European Conference of Iranian Studies. Abstracts Javad Abbasi Saint-Petersburg from the Perspective of Iranian Itineraries in 19th century Iran and Russia had critical and challenging relations in 19th century, well known by war, occupation and interfere from Russian side. Meantime 19th century was the era of Iranian’s involvement in European modernism and their curiosity for exploring new world. Consequently many Iranians, as official agents or explorers, traveled to Europe and Russia, including San Petersburg. Writing their itineraries, these travelers left behind a wealthy literature about their observations and considerations. San Petersburg, as the capital city of Russian Empire and also as a desirable station for travelers, was one of the most important destination for these itinerary writers. The focus of present paper is on the descriptions of these travelers about the features of San Petersburg in a comparative perspective.
    [Show full text]
  • Firdawsi: a Scholium
    Firdawsi: A Scholium by Burzine Waghmar and Sunil Sharma Hakim Abu’l-Qasim Mansur b. al-Hasan al-Firdawsi al-Tusi (ca. 940/41-ca. 1020/25), a middle- ranking aristocrat recognised by his nom de plume, Firdawsi (‘paradisiacal’), was a central figure in the history of classical Persian literature.1 His monumental epic poem, Shahnama (‘Book of Kings’), conjures Homeric as well as Miltonic associations to the Iranian mind thus ensuring him a niche in the universal literary canon.2 This mytho-poetic masterpiece, dealing with Persian legendary and recorded history from the first man to the Arab conquest in AD 652, has been continuously read, recited, remembered, and re-enacted across the Iranian-speaking oecumene straddling West, Central and South Asia for over a millennium.3 Starting from the nineteenth century, a virtual school of Shahnama studies has flourished as successive generations of scholars interpreted and contextualised the text in published abridgements, translations and new editions. Animated productions of Rustam’s adventures, as those of Hercules, are keenly enjoyed by adults and children in contemporary Iran and the diaspora.4 Although Firdawsi dedicated his work to Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 998-1030), his life was spent in the town of Tus, Khurasan, away from the courts of princes and paladins. For almost a generation, about thirty years, he quietly worked on his magnum opus and interspersed it with brief vignettes of his personal life for the reader. As Shahpur Shahbazi has noted: Much has been written on Ferdowsī and his work, but even learned studies have given inharmonious results for the simple reasons that our sources are late, uncritical and contradictory, and that … [t]he best authority is the Šāhnāma itself as the poet frequently breaks his narrative to insert a few lines about his age, work and thoughts.5 Firdawsi belonged to the traditional squirearchy or dihqan class emotively tied to its land and ancient Persian culture.
    [Show full text]
  • ASPS 2015 Program
    THE SEVENTH BIENNIAL CONVENTION OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF PERSIANATE SOCIETIES (ASPS) ASPS/Istanbul 2015 September 8-11, 2015 Istanbul, Turkey VENUE MIMAR SINAN FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY, FINDIKLI CAMPUS Address: Meclis-i Mebusan Caddesi No: 24 Fındıklı 34427, Beyoğlu, İstanbul Website: http://www.msgsu.edu.tr/tr-TR/findikli/606/Page.aspx Telephone: 0212 252 16 00 THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF PERSIANATE SOCIETIES PRESIDENT Saïd Amir Arjomand State University of New York, Stony Brook VICE PRESIDENT Jo-Ann Gross The College of New Jersey ACTING TREASURER Pooriya Alimoradi University of Toronto PAST-PRESIDENTS Parvaneh Pourshariati Institute for the Study of Ancient World (ISAW/NYU and CUNY) Rudi Matthee University of Delaware FOUNDER & PAST-PRESIDENT Saïd Amir Arjomand State University of New York Stony Brook BOARD OF DIRECTORS Pooriya Alimoradi University of Toronto Sussan Babaie The Courtauld Institute of Art Kathryn Babayan University of Michigan 2 Houchang Chehabi Boston University Ghazzal Dabiri University of Ghent Rudi Matthee University of Delaware Jawid Mojaddedi Rutgers University Judith Pfeiffer University of Oxford 3 REGIONAL OFFICE DIRECTORS ARMENIA Garnik Asatrian Caucasian Center for Iranian Studies, Yerevan BALKANS Ahmed Zildžić, The Oriental Institute, Sarajevo COUNCIL FOR EURASIA Florian Schwarz Austrian Academy of Sciences GEORGIA George Sanikidze Institute of Oriental Studies, Tbilisi INDIA Isthtiyaq Ahmad Zilli Aligarh Muslim University IRAN Kourosh Kamali Fars Encyclopedia, Shiraz, Iran PAKISTAN Muhammad Saleem
    [Show full text]
  • Oral Character of Middle Persian Literature – New Perspective
    ROCZNIK ORIENTALISTYCZNY, T. LXVII, Z. 1, 2014, (s. 151–168) MATEUSZ MIKOŁAJ KŁAGISZ Oral Character of Middle Persian Literature – New Perspective Abstract From the very beginning oral transmission of texts played a significant role in the Iranian world. It became a main topic of several works by Bailey (1943), Boyce (1957, 1968), de Menasce (1973), Skjærvø (1384hš), Smurzyński (2006) and Tafazzoli (1378hš). In my paper I try to depict the problem of orality in Middle Persian literature once again, but this time using some tools developed by Ong. On the other hand, it is highly likely that at least the “obscurity” is addressed to works of the 9th century that also contain material which at one time was transmitted orally, but which themselves were products of a written culture. Their style is difficult because the authors wrote in long, complicated sentences. Most of these sentences are in no way adopted to be transmitted by heart. Key words Middle Persian, literature, orality, influence In this article I would like to deal with the problem of orality and its influence on the formal structure of written Middle Persian texts. I use the adjective ‘written’ deliberately because most of Middle Persian texts, that we have at our disposal now, existed originally as unwritten and only later were written down. Paradoxically, it means that we are able to gain some information about orality literature only from some printed sources. The question of orality (and literacy) was elaborated by different Orientalists, but in my paper I am using Walter Jackson Ong’s method of analysis of texts existing first of all as acoustic waves.1 From this point of view, my paper is situated within the framework of today’s research on pre-Islamic literature in Iran but offers a new perspective.
    [Show full text]
  • The Manichaean Living Self Reflected in Persian Mystical Poetry
    The Manichaean Living Self Reflected in Persian Mystical Poetry Omid Behbahani Introduction The Living Self, as part of the divine entity imprisoned in Matter, is a defined concept in the Manichaean mythological terminology. The essence of this concept, adopted and adapted in Iranian Mysticism and reflected in the words of Persian poets, is the focus of this article. After introducing the concept of Living Self, I will bring some examples of Rumi, Hafez, and a few modern Persian poets to demonstrate the conti- nuity of ancient believes in classical and modern Persian poetry. Manichaeism, founded in the third century CE by Mani, borne in Bab- ylonia (a province of Persia at the time), once flourished in the ancient world and claimed followers from North Africa to China for over a mil- lennium. It was adopted as the state religion by Uygur kingdom (762- 840 CE). “In China the religion was proscribed in 863, but although persecuted it survived there at least until the 14th century.”1 1Mary Boyce: A Reader in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian, Textes et Mémoires, vol. 2 (Téhéran, Liège: Bibliothèque Pahlavi, 1975), 4. Omid Behbahani <[email protected]> is an Associate Professor in Ancient Iranian Cul- ture and Languages at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (IHCS), Tehran, Iran. She teaches Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian Texts of Turfan (Xinyang, China) at IHCS, Faculty of Linguistics (1998-present). She was appointed Invited Lecturer in Persian Language and Iranian Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary (2008-2009), and the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Australia (2014-2017).
    [Show full text]