the Role of Verbal Communication Factors in Applying Expressive Devices

A Study of the Literary Tradition of "Compiling the Accompanying Story" and an Analysis of the Motive of the Poet in the Epic Poems after

 Shāh-nāma (A Case Study: The Old Burzō-nāma)

Dr. Farzad Ghaemi[1]

Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

Introduction

Among the epics that were written as an imitation of the Ferdowsi's Shāh-nāma, there is no epic as expanded and known as Burzō-nāma. The variants diversity of this story is unique in Persian literature and the reputation of no independent story out of Ferdowsi's Shāh-nāma has been as the story of Burzō; its vast penetration in versions of Shāh-nāma is an evidence for this claim, which started for ninth century AD and it was known as a part of Ferdowsi's Shāh-nāma for its audiences during almost five hundred years. There are two major mysteries about this text, one is the identity of its poet or poets and the other is the position of its stories among other Iranian epics.

The old Burzō-nāma is one of the most important epic texts of Persian that, after Ferdowsi's Shāh-nāma, has the most plurality and diversity of manuscripts among Persian epic texts; but since it has only an independent manuscript, most of which are the manuscripts of Shāh-nāma, they are less cognitively reviewed. The identity of this work as an accompanying story in Ferdowsi's Shāh-nāma is not a specific feature of this text.

Goals and materials

This study has faced numerous ambiguities and contradictions in reviewing what researchers have said about Burzō-nāma. The most important factor is that most of those who have made information in this respect did not have access to all versions and even they sometimes have not properly studied the existing versions. The current study has tried to resolve these researches' deficits by investigating the maximum versions of Burzō-nāma, which were available and find a solution for two mysteries related to the identity of the poet of Burzō-nāma and position of this story among other Iranian epics. Naturally, the previous information will also be criticized while discussing new information about this issue.

In the seventh to ninth centuries, there are also other stories that have been composed with an approach to join to the Shāh-nāma; hence, they can be found among the versions of Shāh-nāma as an annex rather than an independent epic; including the stories of Shabrang, ĀzarBarzīn and Kok-e Kohzad. It seems that there was this tendency in a period of composing epics in Iran and it had contributed to create text that can be mentioned as "Aghmār–e Shāh-nāma".

Thus, Burzō-nāma has been composed by a poet named Shams al-Din Mohammad Kusaj belonging to the seventh to eighth centuries (probably prior to 720 A.H.), which according to the rumors among people about the reputation of the story and that all these stories have not been composed in the text of Kusaj. A poet named ʿAtāiʾ has begun an epic entitled "Burzō-nāma" by joining some verses from Rustam and Sohrab by Ferdowsi to Burzō-nāma by Kusaj (contains the story of Rustam and Burzō and the story of musician Susan) and continuing the story of Burzō. The story of Burzō has been the remainder of the story of Rustam and Sohrab and it has belonged to the reign of Kavus but Kusaj has transferred the story to the position between the stories of Bijan and Manije, YāzdahRokh and KayKhosrow Era for some reasons such as avoidance of serving Burzō for a king who has withheld panacea from his father and he has probably intended to join his work to the Ferdowsi's masterpiece. This transfer has created some other contradictions in terms of fiction; therefore, in some recent and limited versions, the story has been transferred to a position between the story of Siavash and the story of Rustam and Sohrab along with some changes, in the same versions, some verses were added to the end of it, which contain the death of Burzō by Mehras-e Div and the killing of the Div by Burzō and seeing this disaster in a nightmare for Rustam (in the tenth century).

Conclusion

This essay, by examining the quality of the transmutation of the old Burzō-nāma, and analyzing and generalizing the findings of the manuscript, designed the triplet model for the classification of the sources of this genre: the Persian National Epic. According to this model, Persian epics are found in the seventh and tenth centuries in three Text Types of manuscripts: Independent manuscript, a manuscript in the epic collection and a manuscript in the Shāh-nāma manuscript. The literary tradition that created these texts is the tradition of "compiling the accompanying story." According to this tradition, both the creators of the works and the scribes of manuscripts, instead of creating an independent work, had a motive for joining their story to the genre's standard text (Shāh-nāma). For this reason, most of the manuscripts of the ancient period (47 manuscripts out of 54 manuscripts) were manuscripts annexed to Shāh-nāma, and the poet (Kōsaj) also probably wrote the work for joining the Shāh-nāma, or at least in relation to it.

Keywords: the old Burzō-nāma, Ferdowsi's Shāh-nāma, Kōsaj as an accompanying story, manuscript.

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