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A Rhymed Ballad in Pahlavi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

J. C. Tavadia
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Extract

The Pahlavi text presented here has already been published, summarized, and translated (once with and once without transcription). Its contents cannot be said to be of great value, since no new light is thrown on the main theme—the advent of Shah Vahrām after the end of the Zaratušt-millennium. Yetthe text deserves to be treated again, if only for the fact, hitherto unnoticed, that it is a poem with rhyme. This fact must be welcomed for several reasons: firstly, as being of interest in itself; secondly as providing fresh material for the general study of prosody in pre-Islamic times; and finally as affording valuable help for the correct interpretation of the text.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 87 , Issue 1-2 , April 1955 , pp. 29 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1955

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References

page 29 note 1 See The Pahlavi Texts…ed.… Asana, Jamasp ii, p. 160 fGoogle Scholar.; B. T. Anklesaria's introduction to this work, p. 52; Asa, Dastur M. Jamasp in Sir J. J. Madressa Jubilee Volume … ed. … Modi, , p. 75 fGoogle Scholar.; Bailey, H. W., Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books, p. 195 fGoogle Scholar. The text is simple enough, yet there have been great divergences in the translations, to which I refer in special instances. One of the common difficulties in Pahlavi studies, which is met with here, is the problem of how properly to divide and analyse the sentences.

page 29 note 2 See BSOAS., 1950, xiii/3, p. 647 fGoogle Scholar. The so-called fragment occurs at the end of a text rightly described as a sermon; mark the words of address at the beginning, and also in § 13. The lines were probably composed by the preacher himself, as the opening word dārēm … “I have …” indicates; and they form a suitable conclusion to the sermon, especially to what immediately precedes them on the vanity of youth and life. May I remark here that in 5b abērāh šud hēnd probably means “they have become wanderers”? cf. N.Pers. bī-rāh šudan; in 6a one can read with TD and JU vēnēt instead of dīd and take the rest with what follows; and for the last word āsān, “facile thing”, we require a different reading (?) and meaning to suit the context: “why not consider the world as an inn and the body as—(?)”. Herzfeld, , Zoroaster and his World, p. 236Google Scholar, suggests ast “hostel, inn”; but the rhyme is against this reading, even if it could be otherwise maintained.

page 30 note 1 See, e.g., Tavadia, , Indo-Iranian Studies, i, p. 90Google Scholar; and Draχt Asōrīk (often).

page 30 note 2 This I have left aside in considering the present text. The piece might be improved by adopting at least a fixed number of syllables, but even this I have not attempted. It is easy, however, to mark one or two caesuras in each line, as has been done here, and this is sufficient for a sung ballad. The last line is very short, but the manner of recitation may have compensated for this.

page 30 note 3 The transcription is in conformity with the common custom of representing M.Pers. in its “second-century pronunciation”, although a system closer to the later Pazand would perhaps be more suitable. Under it the first line, for instance, would read thus: kay bavāδ ku paig-ē āyēδ až hindū(g)ān.