Art. 2.-THE MAKING OF AN EPIC: FIRDAUSI AND
HOMER

1. A Literary History of Persia. By E. G. Browne, Sir
Thomas Adams' Professor of Arabic in the University
of Cambridge. Two vols. London: Fisher Unwin,

5.

1902-1906

2. The Stáhnáma of Firdausí, done into English by A. G. Warner and E. Warner. In progress: three vols. published. London: Kegan Paul, 1905-1908.

The Shahnameh. By Turner Macan. Calcutta, 1829.

Four vols.

Le Livre des Rois. Publié, traduit et commenté par
Jules Mohl. Seven vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale,

1838-1878.

& Das Iranische Nationalepos. By Theodor Nöldeke. Strassburg: Trübner, 1896.

THE modern Persian is deprived of at least one fascinating intellectual amusement which seems destined to offer unending and ever-varying stimulus to the imagination of the Western. He cannot, poor man, speculate indefireins to his constructive fancy without the painful nitely as to the origin of his Homer. He can give no necessity of taking into account historical facts duly attested and comprehensive enough to make the exercise almost wholly unprofitable. It is not too much to say that the Persian epic is the only national epic in the world of which the growth from first to last can be traced with Something like certainty. Much indeed of the romantic detail with which the story of the Shahnama is told in the land of its birth is probably or demonstrably fictits; but Firdausi himself, as garrulous about his Sources and methods as Homer is reticent, has left us large number of facts whose authenticity is above dspate; and these, when confronted with the literary histories of which Persia is so prolific, enable the severest tie to construct a history of which the main outlines

we unquestionable.

One to students of the East for more than a century. The story has of course been a more or less familiar recur to it now for various reasons.

We

In the first

place it is a matter for national congratulation tha England, whose scholars were the first to bring Firdaus: to the knowledge of the West, and which claims one o the two complete printed editions of the Shahnama should be in a fair way to claim as well one of the two complete metrical translations. Mr A. G. Warner, whom his brother describes as the senior partner in the task unhappily died before the publication of the first volume but Mr Edmond Warner appears to be eminently capable of carrying the work through. It is one which needs a hero to complete; and it is with great satisfaction that we note that the translator's scholarly qualifications are not inferior to his courage.

We propose in this article to confine ourselves to the historical side of the Persian epic. Some comparatively recent discoveries have thrown fresh light on the tradition. The veteran Orientalist Theodor Nöldeke has applied his unequalled learning to sifting the truth out of the fanciful legends which have grown up about Firdausi's name. Prof. Browne's luminous and vigorous have brought the whole question within the purview of the English reader. And finally, wide apart though Homer and Firdausi stand, it is not impossible that a comparison of the Greek and Persian epics in the making may afford interesting analogies, and serve in some degree to illuminate a problem which lies at the very foundations of literary criticism.

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One thing at least they have in common. Each is in the fullest sense a national epic. The Shahnama, now just nine hundred years old, still lives, not only in the studies of the learned, but in the ears of the people, recited, as was the Iliad 2500 years ago, by wandering rhapsodists, and everywhere welcomed as the fullest and truest expression of the national spirit, the very voice of the native mythology, the flower of Persian literary genius. In this respect Homer and Firdausi stand divided by a clear gulf from the literary epic-from Virgil, Dante, and Milton. A vigorous life of nine centuries must be accounted as at least a respectable bid for immortality; and the Shahnama can hardly be omitted

prose.

The other is in Italian, by Signor Pizzi, Mohl's translation is in

1

THE MAKING OF AN EPIC

from any enquiry into the conditions which make literary
work what we call, in our rather impudent fashion,
immortal. The history of the Shahnama goes back, in
its
fact, a good deal more than nine hundred years;
literary birth took place some four centuries earlier, near
the end of the great Sasanian empire-that Persian
empire which maintained itself so long on terms of proud
equality with the Roman, till it withered and crumbled,
in the second quarter of the seventh century A.D., before
the slanght of new-born Islam.

It was, according to tradition, in the reign of the very
las of the Sasanian kings, Yazdagird III, that the first
complete corpus of Persian history was compiled. This
gan with the very dawn of mythology, and was con-
inued down to date; actual history taking, of course, a
arger place in later times, but always leaving room for
myth. Materials in literary form already existed. The
Avesta itself was authority for much in the beginning of
things; official court-chronicles seem to have been assidu-
ously kept; and there existed what have been called
'historical novels,' dealing with short episodes of national
history. Two of these, in fact, have survived; and with
them we shall have to deal later.

materials into a continuous prose narrative is ascribed to the digan Danishwar." Whether the name is right or not, such a compilation was certainly made; and prob

The work

ability points to the date as the correct one.
was called the 'Khodainamak,' or Book of Kings, and
was written in Pahlavi, the official and literary language

of western Persia.

And invasion swept away both the Sasanian dynasty Hardly, however, was the work completed when the and Persian literature. For four centuries every Persian man of letters-and Prof. Browne tells how numerous and distinguished they were-wrote in Arabic only. The ent Pahlavi became a dead language, learnt and ven only for ecclesiastical purposes by the Magian pists, who carefully preserved the theological works ven in it, and neglected all others. The Khodainamak,

landel entry or petite noblesse, the main repositories of ancient tradition. Het te word came in time to be almost synonymous with 'bard' or 'The title 'dibqan,' literally 'village lord' or squire, was given to the

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however, was of such general interest that it wƐ translated into Arabic during the eighth century, an was used as a mine of historical material by the able an voluminous writers who recorded the past glories c Persia. No doubt much of this translation is preserve verbatim in the existing works of Tabari and others; bu the original text, like that of the Khodainamak itself is irrecoverably lost. To the orthodox Moslem a bool which proclaimed the glories of heathen fire-worshipper was an abomination; and thus the Persian epic neve won popularity till a national spirit arose with force sufficient to overcome religious prejudice.

The Persian renascence took place about the middle of the tenth century. With the decay of the Abbasid Cali fate at Baghdad, adventurers on the northern and eastern borders began to set up semi-independent principalities. At their small courts the national movement gathered head; and the vernacular Persian, a near relative, though not a direct descendant, of the ancient Pahlavi, was raised to the dignity of a literary language. Among the princes who encouraged the new literature, evidently for political reasons, was a certain Muhammad Abu Mansur, prince of Tus in Khurasan. We are told that he had a commission of four appointed to collect the remains of the Pahlavi chronicle and compile a Persian Book of Kings; and, though Firdausi does not name Abu Mansur, he directly confirms the tradition in his introduction. The passage is perhaps worth translating.

'A book there was, writ down in days of eld;
Exceeding wealth of olden tales it held.
Scattered among the Magians was its lore;
Each sage grew rich upon its hidden store.

A prince there was, a lord of noble birth,†
Puissant in might, in courage, mind and worth;
Curious of things long overpast and gone,
He sought out memories of all deeds done.

* This oddly recalls Tzetzes' mythical story of the commission of four appointed by Pisistratus to compile Homer; to complete the coincidence, one of the four names in the Persian list, as in the Greek, has come down in a mutilated form.

Literally of dihqan birth.' This is a courtier's flattery, for we are told that Abu Mansur had to order a fictitious genealogy.

From every and the Magians hoar he sought;
And thus the book unto one place was brought.
He questioned them of all the royal race

And bygone heroes-sought their time and place.
The Magians told him one by one their lore,
The gests of kings and paladins of yore;
And, as he hearkened to the words they said,
The famous book's foundations there he spread;
That book his monument on earth became,
Mid mall and great the glory of his name.'

The old Khodainamak was certainly the main source
of the new Book of Kings; in no other way can we
explain the identity, often verbal, of whole passages of
Arab historians with the Shahnama. But in all prob-
ability a great deal of fresh matter was introduced,
including the substance of some of the historical novels

already mentioned.

This new Book of Kings was, like its Pahlavi predecessor, in prose. But the national movement had created

Persian poetry; and a metrical version was evidently
called for in the nature of things. It was taken in hand
by a young poet whose pen-name was Daqiqi; his repu-
tation was already established, and some lyrical work of
his has survived. He began the great task, not at the
beginning, but at the coming of Zoroaster in the reign
of Gushtasp; he had completed only a thousand couplets
when he died-assassinated, we are told, by a Turkish
slave. This was in the year 975 A.D.

Daqiqi was a native of Tus, where the prose Book of

Kings was

me town that the poetical completion of the Shahnama Wachieved. Firdausi was born, apparently, in 935 A.D. From the numerous statements he himself in different parts of the Shahnama,

s compiled; and it was by another native of the

makes about his

age

it seems that he took up the task at over forty years of age, and worked at it for over thirty-five years. The ompletion of the whole took place, according to his own February 25, 1010 A.D., when he was not far

pilogue,

on

art of eighty, reckoning by Mohammedan lunar years.†

The common form Firdusi is a purely European mistake.

He still had the energy to write, during the remaining ten years of his, another epic, 'Joseph and Zulaikha,' about as long as the Iliad.

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