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A Unique Episode from the Kārnāmag ī Ardašīr ī Pābagān in a Nineteenth-Century Illustrated Indian Manuscript of the Shāhnāmeh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Nasrin Askari
Nasrin Askari*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

The episode under discussion in this article comes from the Middle Persian text Kārnāmag ī Ardašīr ī Pābagān. It does not appear in any published edition of the Shāhnāmeh, nor does it seem to be recorded in any manuscript consulted for these editions. The episode is versified and illustrated in a nineteenth-century manuscript preserved in the Government Museum in Alwar, India. If it is an early interpolation, why is it not found in major Shāhnāmeh manuscripts? And if it is a late interpolation, how did it find its way into an Indian manuscript at such a late date? The article proposes a provenance for the manuscript and draws attention to the possible role of the Zoroastrian community in India in the transmission of Ferdowsi's opus.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Pre-islamic Iranian Literary Heritage , March 2012 , pp. 203 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2012

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Footnotes

She is currently writing her dissertation on the Shāhnāmeh as a Mirror for Princes. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Shāhnāmeh Conference (Shahnama: The Next Thousand Years) held at the University of Cambridge, 13–15 December 2010. The author is indebted to the invaluable comments of Profs. Maria E. Subtelny, Karin Rührdanz, and Enrico Raffaelli on the earlier drafts of this paper.

References

1 I came across this illustration on the website of the Cambridge Shahnama Project while doing research on the depiction of Ardashir in the Shāhnāmeh for a chapter of my doctoral dissertation. On this website, the image is identified as “Ardashir recognizes his son Shapur during a polo game,” with a note indicating that it is “more like a hunt than a game of polo.” See http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/card/ceillustration:2147356945 (accessed May 28, 2011).

2 Grenet, Frantz, ed. and trans., La geste d'Ardashīr fils de Pâbag: Kārnāmag ī Ardaxšēr ī Pābagān (Die, France, 2003);Google Scholar Farahvashi, Bahrām, ed. and trans., Kārnāmeh-ye Ardashir-e Bābakān, 3rd ed. (Tehran, 1382/2003).Google Scholar Grenet provides the Pahlavi text, its transcription and French translation, and an introduction to the text. Farahvashi provides the Pahlavi text, its transcription, a Perian translation, a glossary, and excerpts from a number of Persian and Arabic sources that contain an account about Ardashir.

3 Ferdowsi, Abu al-Qāsem, Shāhnāmeh, ed. Motalq, Jalāl Khāleqi and Omidsālār, Mahmud (New York, 2005), 6: 198–99.Google Scholar Subsequent references are to this edition of the Shāhnāmeh unless otherwise stated.

4 Ferdowsi, Abu al-Qāsem, Shākh-nāme: kriticheskiy tekst, ed. Bertel's, Evgeniy E. et al. (Moscow, 1968), 7: 156–61;Google Scholar Firdousi, Abu'lkasim, Le livre des rois, ed. Mohl, Jules (Paris, 1838-78; repr., 1976), 5: 332–42.Google Scholar

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6 Ferdowsi, Shāhnāmeh, 6: 194–99 (lines 15–87).

7 Grenet, La geste d'Ardashīr, 103 (chap. 11, §§ 1–4); Farahvashi, Kārnāmeh-ye Ardashir-e Bābakān, 101–03 (chap. 10, §§ 1–5).

8 The first line of the folio does not show in the image posted on the website of the Cambridge Shahnama Project.

9 This word is not legible as it appears on the image posted on the website of the Cambridge Shahnama Project (Fig. 1). The closest place name to this word is , which is a small town near Khurramshahr in south-western Iran, and , which is a small town near Sirjān in south-eastern Iran. See ‘Alī Akbar Dehkhoda, Loghat-nāmeh, s.vv. .

10 On the verses that determine the scene to be illustrated, i.e., beyt-e mosavver, see Mehran, Farhad, “The Break-Line Verse: The Link between Text and Image in the ‘First Small’ Shahnama,” Shahnama Studies 1, ed. Melville, Charles (Cambridge, 2006), 151–69.Google Scholar

11 I was not able to examine the manuscript itself, but its illustrations are available in the Cambridge Shahnama Project website at http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/card/cemanuscript:2143527238#StartOfImages (May 28, 2011).

12 According to the catalogue of the Alwar Government Museum, there are four Shāhnāmeh manuscripts in its collection (114, 115, 116, and an unnumbered manuscript). It seems that the manuscript under discussion is the one that is not numbered, as it is the only Shāhnāmeh that is heavily illustrated (178 illustrations according to the catalogue) and has 434 folios. If that is the case, the number ACC 114 given to the work by the Cambridge Shahnama Project website is incorrect, as the manuscript 114, which is dated to the seventeenth century, contains only nineteen illustrations, and has 474 folios. See Catalogue and Guide to the Government Museum, Alwar, Pt. 1, Sculptures-Inscriptions, Arts-Crafts and Paintings-Manuscripts Sections (Jaipur, 1960–61), 102 (no. 2126).

13 Schmitz, After the Great Mughals, 68–70.

14 Schmitz, After the Great Mughals, 70.

15 For more examples, see fols. 17r, 39v, and 50r in the Cambridge Shahnama Project website at http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/card/cemanuscript:2143527238#StartOfImages (accessed May 28, 2011).

16 Schmitz, After the Great Mughals, 70.

17 For more examples of architectural forms in the Alwar manuscript, see fols. 6r, 31v, 32v, 71v, 79r in the Cambridge Shahnama Project website at http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/card/cemanuscript:2143527238#StartOfImages (accessed May 28, 2011).

18 Schmitz, Barbara, “Muhammad Bakhsh Sahhaf and the Illustrated Book in Ranjit Singh's Lahore,” Lahore: Paintings, Murals, and Calligraphy, ed. Schmitz, Barbara (Mumbai, 2010), 95–99.Google Scholar

19 Barbara Schmitz, “Muhammad Bakhsh Sahhaf,” 99.

20 For more examples of horses, see fols., 50r, 51r, 54v, and 55v; for more examples of the throne-chairs, see fols. 33v, 81r, 88v, 89r, 144v, 150v, and 157v in the Cambridge Shahnama Project website at http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/card/cemanuscript:2143527238#StartOfImages (accessed May 28, 2011).

21 Grenet, La geste d'Ardashīr, 41.

22 Schmitz, After the Great Mughals, 61.

23 Schmitz, After the Great Mughals, 61.

24 Schmitz, After the Great Mughals, 61–63.

25 Yastrebova, Olga, “Shahnama influence on Arday Viraf Nama by Zartusht Bahram,” paper presented at the Shahnama Conference, University of Cambridge, December 13–15, 2007.Google Scholar Yastrebova's paper is expected to be published in the upcoming proceedings of the conference. For the abstract of the paper, see the Cambridge Shahnama Project website at http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/special/abstract.html (accessed May 28, 2011). For Yastrebova's study of the thirteenth-century composition of Ardāy Virāf nāmag, see Ol'ga Mikhailovna Iastrebova [Olga Yastrebova], “Poyema Ardāi-vīrāf-nāma Zardushta Bakhrāma Pazhdū v rukopisi Rossiyskoy natsional'noy biblioteki” (PhD diss., St. Petersburg State University, 2010).

26 For a critical edition and translation of the text, see Williams, Alan, ed. and trans., The Zoroastrian Myth of Migration from Iran and Settlement in the Indian Diaspora: Text, Translation and Analysis of the 16th Century Qeṣṣe-ye Sanjān ‘The Story of Sanjan’ (Leiden, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Williams, Zoroastrian Myth of Migration, 198.

28 According to Williams, the structure of the narrative is based on the Zoroastrian cosmological concepts. See Williams, Zoroastrian Myth of Migration, 23–40.

29 On Āzar Keyvān and his disciples, as well as a discussion about their works, see Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohammad, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism and Historiography (New York, 2001), 86–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the references cited.

30 al-Esfahāni, Hamzeh b. al-Hasan, Ketāb tārikh seni moluk al-arz va al-anbeyā', 2 vols. in 1, ed. Gottwaldt, I. M. E. (St. Petersburg, 1844–48), 1: 23–4.Google Scholar