Four passages taken from different times and places:<\/p>\n
“…the horned dragon, horse devourer, men-devourer, “The mass of common people, however, are so constituted that they prefer impossible absurdities, …as when some fool kicks up a commotion and a throng of likeminded people gather round him, and he regales them with such things as, “In a certain sea I saw an island and five hundred of us landed on that island; we baked bread and set up cooking pots, and when the fire got going and its heat reached down into the ground, it moved; we looked and lo and behold the island was a fish.” Or, “On a certain mountain I saw such-and-such things, as an old sorceress turned a man into an ass, and then another sorceress smeared his ear with some kind of unguent and changed him back into human form,” and other such nonsensical tales that bring sleep to the ignorant when read to them at night.” [2]<\/a><\/p>\n “[Physilogus Latinus<\/em> B (ed. Carmody, Versio B, 24)] begins with a statement that there is a sea monster called in Greek aspidochelone<\/em> and in Latin aspido testudo<\/em>. Because this large creature’s back is covered with sand, sailors think it is an island on which they alight. To cook their food, they make a fire, but when the whale feels the heat, it submerges and drags the ship to the depth. When hungry, the whale opens its mouth and emits a pleasant odor. Small fish are thus attracted into the whale’s mouth, which soon closes on them (ed. Carmody Versio Y, 30) …According to the allegory the sailors are the incredulous who, ignoring the wiles of the devil, put their trust in him and sink with him to hell. The small fish are men of little faith who are destroyed by the lures of the devil…” [3]<\/a><\/p>\n [Note: The Mid.Eng. Phys. p.13ff. with ‘significcio’ p.14.; Caxton pp. 88-89 “In this see of Ynde is another fysshe so huge and grete that on his backe groweth erth and grasse; and semeth proprely that it is a grete Ile. Wherof it happeth somtyme that the maronners sayllyng by this see ben gretly deceyued and abused…”]<\/p>\n In the first and earliest account we hear ancient and frequently muffled voices, preserved mostly in late manuscripts and dependent on the efforts of scholars to clarify the frequent lacunae and smooth the staccato syntax.<\/p>\n K\u0259r\u0259s\u0101spa \/ Kars\u0101sp appears several times in the Zoroastrian literature in heroic combat with demonic monsters and in his eschatological role as a dragon-slayer. [5]<\/a> His exploits as the slayer of A\u017ei Sruuara, the horned dragon, and the giant Gandar\u0259\u03b2a are merely alluded to in the Avesta, but elaborated in the Middle Persian writings, and his slaying of A\u017ei Dah\u0101ka, the dragon-like monster with three mouths, three heads, and six eyes, is found only in the Middle Persian and later texts. According to Z<\/em>\u0101<\/em>my<\/em>\u0101<\/em>d Ya\u0161t<\/em> (\u00a719.38-40) when Fortune left Yima\/Jam, the ruler of the golden age, it was caught by Kars\u0101sp, the strongest of strong men in respect of manly courage except for Zarathustra himself. He had killed A\u017ei Sruuara, the giant horned dragon who swallowed horses and men, the poisonous yellow creature over whom poison flowed the height of a spear.<\/p>\n The text recounts that K\u0259r\u0259s\u0101spa was cooking his meal in a pot at midday, apparently unaware of the fact that he was sitting upon the back of the sleeping horned dragon. The blazing heat from his fire made the dragon swelter and wake up. The dragon shook himself violently, the pot overturned and extinguished the fire beneath it, and the terrified K\u0259r\u0259s\u0101spa sped away. Later he eventually succeeds in killing the dragon (Yasn 9.1; Ya\u0161t. 19.40).<\/p>\n Because of this incident, and in spite of his many victorious exploits, Kars\u0101sp was sent to Hell for the inadvertent killing of the Fire, son of Ohrmazd. His ordeal of punishment is narrated in the Pahlavi Riv<\/em>\u0101<\/em>yat<\/em> and the Zoroastrian Persian texts: Ohrmazd summons Kars\u0101sp\u2019s soul from hell and expresses his displeasure with his soul, blaming the soul for extinguishing the fire rather than tending to it. His soul begs Ohrmazd to take pity on him and assign him to paradise in recognition of all the good deeds he had performed throughout his life: keeping evil out of Ohrmazd\u2019s creation and preventing Ahriman from becoming its ruler.[6]<\/a> Finally through the meditation of G\u014d\u0161urun, the soul of the Sole-created Bull, and Zarathustra,[7]<\/a> Kars\u0101sp\u2019s soul is dispatched to ham<\/em>\u0113<\/em>stag<\/em>\u0101<\/em>n<\/em>, the intermediate station between paradise and hell, where he lies unconscious or asleep till the end of the world when he will rise up to kill A\u017ei Dah\u0101g.[8]<\/a> He will be the first among the living to be raised from the dead.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n Kars\u0101sp (Garsh\u0101sp) also appears frequently in Persian literature in the centuries after the rise of Islam and is the eponymous hero of Asadi \u1e6cusi’s (d. 465\/1072-73) epic poem, which describes at length the hero\u2019s Alexander-like exploits and many journeys[10]<\/a> to wondrous isles. The narrative accounts in Persian writings in different genres in the early medieval period are often at variance[11]<\/a> and range from many pages to brief citations providing Kars\u0101sp with conflicting lineages, such as, for example, the brief tabulated reference in Abu Ray\u1e25\u0101n al-Biruni’s list of Persian kings in Al-<\/em>\u0100<\/em>th<\/em>\u0101<\/em>r<\/em>\u02be<\/em>l- b<\/em>\u0101<\/em>qiya <\/em>\u02bf<\/em>an<\/em>\u02be<\/em>l-qorun<\/em>\u02be<\/em>l-kh<\/em>\u0101<\/em>liya<\/em>, “Garsh\u00e2sp<\/em>, i.e. S\u00e2m ben Narim\u00e2n ben Tahm\u00e2sp ben Ashak ben N\u00f4sh ben D\u00fbsar ben Min\u00fbshjihr” (Sachau, p. 112).[12]<\/a><\/p>\n The quoted reference from Biruni brings us to the second passage above, the dismissal of the disturbed whale story as a fanciful bedtime story (samar<\/em>, asm<\/em>\u0101<\/em>r<\/em>), a piece of vulgar pulp fiction, of little instructive or historical value. There is no reference to Kars\u0101sp and his ordeal.<\/p>\n It should also be noted that passage comes towards the end of the surviving volume of Beyhaqi’s T<\/em>\u0101<\/em>rikh-e Mas<\/em>\u02bf<\/em>udi<\/em> in his exordium (kho<\/em>\u1e6d<\/em>ba<\/em>) to his account of the history of Khwarazm where he relies extensively on Biruni’s no longer extant Ket<\/em>\u0101<\/em>b al-mos<\/em>\u0101<\/em>mara fi akhb<\/em>\u0101<\/em>r Khv<\/sup><\/em>\u0101<\/em>razm<\/em>. Both Biruni and Beyhaqi are keen to assure their readers that they maintain scrupulously strict verification principles in their critical interpretation of the past, limited to what they perceive as rational premises where myths and fables have no place. Following the quotation above, where he sneers at the banality of the whale story, Beyhaqi turns to general observations on his approach to history and confides in his readers:<\/p>\n “So I, who have taken up this History, have made it incumbent upon myself to write either from my own direct observations or from sound information, heard from a reliable source. A good while ago, I saw a book written in the hands of Master Abu Rey\u1e25\u0101n, who was peerless in his age in Adab<\/em>, learning, geometry, and philosophy. He would never indulge in exaggerations, and I have given this lengthy passage from his [Biruni’s] book so that it may be firmly established how scrupulous I have been in writing this History.”[13]<\/a><\/p>\n The same insistence on either direct observation or reliable reporting appears in Biruni\u2019s own preface to his magisterial work on India, Ket<\/em>\u0101<\/em>b ta<\/em>\u1e25<\/em>qiq m<\/em>\u0101<\/em> le<\/em>\u02be<\/em>l-Hend<\/em>:<\/p>\n “No one will deny that in questions of historic authenticity hearsay<\/em> [khabar] does not equal eye-witness<\/em> [\u02bfiy\u0101n]; for in the latter the eye of the observer apprehends the substance of that which is observed, both in the time and in the place where it exists, whilst hearsay has its peculiar drawbacks. But for these, it would be even preferable to eye-witness; for the object of eye-witness can only be actual<\/em> momentary existence; whilst hearsay comprehends alike the present, the past, and the future, so as to apply in a certain sense both to that which is<\/em> and to that which is not<\/em> (i.e. which either has ceased to exist or has not yet come into existence).[14]<\/a><\/p>\n Biruni then goes on to distinguish between different “reporters” [mokhberin<\/em>] and the possible ways of lying, in order to avoid repeating fictitious accounts and to find a reliable reporter to convey a true account, as Beyhaqi had done in his own case.<\/p>\n The excerpt from Beyhaqi dismisses therefore the whole imaginative enterprise of explicating memories of this and other \u2018marvels of the east\u2019 and wonders why we should fabricate or preserve far-fetched fables when we have plenty of unambiguous well-attested historical exempla in store, relayed by reliable authorities, enabling us to observe admonitory patterns in history in the longue dur\u00e9e<\/em>.[15]<\/a> Myths are therefore left unacknowledged as such, needing no gloss or elucidation and placed in the rubric of a tale (qe<\/em>\u1e63\u1e63<\/em>a<\/em>) mere fable (afs\u0101na<\/em>) or bedtime stories (asm<\/em>\u0101<\/em>r<\/em>) and dismissed as such.<\/p>\n In the third example, from Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries as well Middle English texts, we come across one of several methods of retrieval and reinterpretation involving euhemeristic, allegorical and rationalizing strategies designed to separate the wheat from the chaff, myth from mere anecdote or fable. We have had to move from one continent to another and to a different culture and literature given the apparent diachronic disjuncture in the history of the burning fish narrative in Persian literature, from the pre-Islamic myth to the popular fable as described and dismissed by Beyhaqi.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n This cultural shift of focus also brings into play the emic<\/em> and etic<\/em> contours that have to be taken into account in comparative literary studies in general and studies of myth\u2014a chameleon like concept\u2014 in particular and in the context of its travel through time, the longue dur\u00e9e<\/em>.[17]<\/a>Although with the burning fish story we face a dead end[18]<\/a>, there are many other examples of survival and re-interpretation of mythical narrative in Persian literature. And it is here that Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh<\/em>, the long poem itself as well as its reverberations in the centuries that followed, performs its double task: not only preserving many narratives in a memorable metrical form, but becoming himself and itself\u2014the poet and the book\u2014a powerful source of myth, perennially ripe for decoding.[19]<\/a> Its heroes have become active-even hyperactive-archetypes, leaving their original contexts to become part of the changing moral and political vocabulary of later times. These mutations are met with in poems classical and modern, in poets as diverse as Ne\u1e93\u0101mi and \u02bfA\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101r, or Akhav\u0101n and Bah\u0101r. They appear as part of the figurative vocabulary of medieval mystics and in the exegetic discourses of a modern intellectual such as Shahrokh Meskoub.[20]<\/a><\/p>\n An often neglected distinction must be made here between specific and direct borrowings from the Shahnameh<\/em>, where the borrower is clearly indebted to the book\u2019s own organization and interpretation of the past, and less precisely traceable use of the store-house of Persian legends which existed before, along and after the appearance of the Shahnameh and from which, of course, the Shahnameh<\/em> itself drew its material[21]<\/a>. Early external references to Persian myths by Greek historians (Herodotus, Xenophon, Ctesias) have been discussed by scholars writing on pre-Islamic oral poetry in Iran. But perhaps the most succinct and colorful illustration is from a famous passage in a later text, Moses of Khoren\u2019s History of the Armenians <\/em>(possibly 8th century):<\/p>\n \u201cBut what then is your delight in the obscene and ridiculous fables of Biurasp Azhdahak; and why do you trouble us for those absurd and incoherent Persian stories notorious for their imbecility? His first benevolence; the service paid him by the dev<\/em>…the kiss on the shoulders and the consequent birth of the dragons; then the increase of evil, and the consuming of men for the need of his stomach… what need have you of these false fables; what are these senseless and stupid compositions? Surely they are not Greek fables, noble ands polished and meaningful, which have hidden in themselves allegorically the meaning of the events…\u201d[22]<\/a><\/p>\n The passage demonstrates not only the widespread knowledge of Iranian myths before Ferdowsi, but also in a blatantly comic form, that air of impatience and distaste for other people\u2019s legends, more so if they happen to be your neighbors, that one often meets in a more veiled manner in the sources for comparative mythology.[23]<\/a> Furthermore, if we compare the passage from Moses of Khorene with another, this time in Arabic by Al-Ya\u02bfqubi:[24]<\/a> we see traces of similar sentiments expressed less abrasively. He too writes that the Persians claim many an unacceptable supposition regarding their kings. And he goes on to cite several examples, repeating the details about snakes sprouting from \u017bah\u0101k\u2019s shoulders and feeding on human brains and the notion of incredibly long life-spans, \u201cand such baseless beliefs and stories \u201d but he does, however, add a proviso echoing to some extent both the cited quotation from Beyhaqi as well as the additional verses in the Florence text of the Shahnameh<\/em> (see above, n.19), that these views were held by the common folk and frowned upon by the higher echelons of the Persian society, their notables and scholars.<\/p>\n But the mythical dimensions of the \u017ba\u1e25\u0101k story does not end with these early attempts at its destruction either through outright dismissal, as worthless lies, or explication through an allegorical addendum. On the contrary, it achieves a kind of Faustian popularity in the Iranian consciousness with many unexpected twists and turns derived from the authors\u2019 immersion in later works of literature and philosophy: it turns up in the works of Akhundz\u0101deh and Majd al-Molk (Res\u0101la-ye Majddiyya<\/em>) and in more recent times in the writings of several writers and intellectuals. Ahmad Shamlou\u2019s exercise in normative defamiliarization, presenting \u017ba\u1e25\u0101k as more sinned against than sinning, fails because of its ideological heavy-handedness specially if one compares it to the subtle way medieval mystics had salvaged the reputation of his master, Satan. On the other hand, Sa\u02bfidi Sirj\u0101ni\u2019s no less politically charged contemporary satire based also on the \u017ba\u1e25\u0101k legend is, on the whole, a successful blend of half-serious academic and naqq\u0101li<\/em> techniques.[25]<\/a> One could go on about other and more recent interpretations but here we will limit ourselves to pre-modern literature and a reference to one of the earliest critics of pre-Islamic Iranian myths: Shahmard\u0101n b. Abi\u2019l-Khayr and his Nozhat-n\u0101ma-ye \u02bfAl\u0101\u02bei<\/em> [26]<\/a> in which he debunks many of the important Pre-Islamic legends including that of \u017ba\u1e25\u0101k with a series of ingeniously commonsensical clinical or psychological explanations for the seemingly supernatural content.[27]<\/a> \u017ba\u1e25\u0101k for example becomes a cancer patient who requires supplies of human brains as a sedative. This method of puncturing the balloon of a complicated mode of representation and deflating it to a commonsensical no nonsense level is a common feature in most literatures, it is often used for comic effects, for parody, etc. and it could be a kind of back-handed compliment. But it may also stem from a failure of imagination in comprehending a different mode of reality or a stubborn and dogged refusal to acknowledge the possibility of any other world vision except one limited to one’s own background and formation[28]<\/a>.<\/p>\n In this context, perhaps from amongst the many definitions cited by John S. Gentile (see n.17), the most terse and oracular “Myth is a type of speech” (Roland Barthes) is most helpful in the context of the self-contained world of the Shahnameh<\/em>, or within individual ghazals of Hafez[29]<\/a>, where myth as a mode of discourse interweaves with other modes and in the process alters the reader or the hearer’s perception of his or her own world.<\/p>\n It is in this interaction with other types of speech and modes of representation that the very nebulousness that is often associated with myths can enrich the entire work. The attempt at justification of myths by reading them as allegories has already been referred to (see n.19). Such a technique is effective in rescuing\u00a0myths from accusations of being either harmful superstitions or harmless night-time-stories. But the rescue attempt becomes far more urgent and precarious in cultures in transition with their own divine scriptures, newly imported from outside, and where other and earlier myths are regarded as either polluted or deceitfully fanciful substitutes. The overall version of the pre-Islamic past as depicted in the Qur’an is admonitory and pessimistic: with repeated references to tribes and people who stubbornly refused to accept the words of the divine messengers sent to them, preferring what they claimed were the hallowed ways of their forefathers, and their inevitable downfall as a result. To make matters worse, some preferred the market place stories of pagan origin (in some commentaries specified as the stories of Rostam and Esfandi\u0101r) to the contents of the divine scriptures with their chronicle of previous prophets. [30]<\/a><\/p>\n Transitions bring tensions and there are examples of the contrast between this piously religious view of the past and its disdain for the ultimately flimsy and transient splendors of past empire and that implicit in the work of some writers in the early centuries after the rise of Islam and later, both in Arabic and Persian.[31]<\/a><\/p>\n This veneration of the past is implicit in the Shahnameh<\/em> where there is no ecumenical attempt, with the possible exception of one line, at any synchronization of Islamic and Iranian myths[32]<\/a>. And it is implicit in what may be called the mythic realism of the texture of the poem as a whole. It is this faith, occasionally tinged with a note of anxiety about the scope of the task at hand in passages where the persona of the poet assumes the role of the arch-hero building a monumental palace of words, which produces that awe-inspiring (sahmgin) seriousness. It becomes the defining hallmark of the Shahnameh<\/em> tacitly, and acknowledged as such by its audience in later generations. An oblique acknowledgment of this also appears in a well-known early reference, perhaps from around the middle of the 11th century (1053), and therefore about a half century after the poet\u2019s death[33]<\/a>. The anonymous author or authors of T\u0101rikh-e Sist\u0101n <\/em>writes:<\/p>\n \u201cThe account of Rostam (hadith-e-Rostam) is as Ferdowsi has described in verse in the Shahnameh<\/em>. He dedicated it to Sultan Ma\u1e25mud and read it out to him over several days. At last Ma\u1e25mud said: \u201cBut all this Book of Kings<\/em> is nothing by itself except for the story of Rostam and in my army I have a thousand men like Rostam.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMay the King\u2019s life be a long one, \u201d Ferdowsi replied, \u201cI would not know how many men of Rostam\u2019s caliber there are in his army but I do know this: that the Almighty God never again created a subject for himself like Rostam.\u201d Having said this, he kissed the ground and left. Ma\u1e25mud turned to his vizier and said, \u201cThis little man has just implied that I am a liar.\u201d \u201cHe must be executed\u201d the vizier suggested. But no matter how hard they tried, they could not find him.\u201d<\/p>\n Even perhaps in the translation the clash between the different registers of the speech, marked and unmarked, comes through. The text\u2019s refusal to explain its heroes in other term or currency than in their own sharply defined mytho-historical reality was a reminder, a jolt, a challenge and sometimes an irritant to both the panegyrists and composers of narrative poems after Ferdowsi.[34]<\/a><\/p>\n Finally at the end of this mythic roundabout, we return briefly to Pinocchio and the world of present day uses of myth in different media. We end with the story of \u0100rash the heroic archer who sacrificed his life for his homeland and its borders. His fate resembles that of one of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus: his deeds are mentioned in a variety of pre-modern sources but not in the Shahnameh[35]<\/a>. There are therefore no illustrations of him in manuscripts (though apparently he does appear on some coins[36]<\/a>). His resurrection in the twentieth century as an emblem of nationalism and heroic self-sacrifice was inevitable. It is Biruni who offers the most succinct synopsis of his story, adopting here his other laudable role: that of a scrupulous and dispassionate recorder of long held beliefs and customs:<\/p>\n From Biruni (Al-\u0100th\u0101r al-b\u0101qiya<\/em>): On the Festivals in the Months of the Persians. (Sachau tr. p. 205; A\u1e0fk\u0101\u02bei \/Azk\u0101ei ed. pp. 270-71):<\/p>\n On the 13th, or T\u00eer-R\u00f4z, there is feast T\u00eerag\u00e2n, so called on account of the identity of the name of the month and the day. Of the two causes to which it is traced back, one is this, that Afr\u00e2s\u00eeab, after having subdued Er\u00e2nshahr, and while besieging Min\u00f4chihr in Tabarist\u00e2n, asked him some favour, Min\u00f4chihr compiled with his wish, on the condition that he (Afr\u00e2s\u00eeab) should restore to him part of Er\u00e2nshahr as long and as broad as an arrow-shot. On that occasion there was a genius present, called Isfand\u00e2rmadh; he ordered to be brought a bow and an arrow of such a size as he himself had indicated to the arrow-maker, in conformity with that which is manifest<\/em> in the Avast\u00e2. Then he sent for Arish, a noble, pious, and wise man, and ordered him to take the bow and to shoot the arrow. Arish stepped forward, took off his clothes, and said: “O king, and ye others, look at my body. I am free from any wound or disease. I know that when I shoot with this bow and arrow I shall fall to pieces and my life will be gone, but I have decided to sacrifice it for you.” Then he applied himself to the work, and bent the bow with all the power God had given him; then he shot, and fell asunder into pieces. By the order of God the wind bore the arrow away from the mountain of R\u00fby\u00e2n and brought it into the utmost frontier of Khur\u00e2s\u00e2n between Fargh\u00e2na and \u1e6cabarist\u00e2n; there it hit the trunk of a nut-tree that was so large that there had never been a tree like it in the world. The distance between the place where the arrow was shot and that where it fell was 1,000 Farsakh. Afr\u00e2si\u00e2b and Min\u00f4chihr made a treaty on the basis of this shot that was shot on this day. In consequence people made it a feast-day.\u201d<\/p>\n And from Biruni we move to, and end with, a recent animation from the Islamic Republic of Iran with its own theatrical notions of the archaic language of heroes and its side-glances eastwards, to Hayao Miyazaki’s Ghibli studios and his Ashitaka rather than to Disney’s world and Pinocchio.<\/p>\n
\nyellow and poisonous, had yellow poison
\nmounting on him to the height of a spear.
\nOn the back of this dragon Keresaspa the hero
\nhappened to stew his meat in a kettle
\nat lunchtime.
\nThe monster began to be hot and transpire;
\nhe darted forth with a jolt
\nspilling the boiling water:
\nheroic Keresaspa fled in terror.” [1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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