A Pahlavi Poem

Bibliographic Data

ID2815705
AuthorsW B Henning (corresponding author)
Year1950
Volume13
Issue3
Pages641-648
Publication date1950-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0041-977X • E-ISSN: 1474-0699
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0041977x00140066
OpenAlexW2060483899
LanguageEN
Citations received21

The study of the Pahlavi poetry, so spiritedly initiated by M. Benveniste twenty years ago, seems to have come to a dead end. That certain Pahlavi texts, as the Ayādgār-ī Zarērān or the Draxt-ī Asūrīg (the Dispute of the date-palm with the goat), are poems, is conceded on all sides; but the formal problems, the problems of rhythm, metre, and rhyme, remain in the dark. It seems doubtful whether the material at hand is capable of leading us to definite conclusions. There are two main obstacles. Firstly, the notorious sloppiness of the copyists leaves too much room for conjecture; the mere addition or omission, at the editors' discretion, of the word for "and" and the harf-i idāfet is sufficient to disturb the rhythmical balance. Secondly, as a rule we do not know the dates of composition, and therefore cannot tell how the words were pronounced by the authors; it makes a considerable difference to the metre (whatever it was) whether we put down paδak or paig, mazdayasn or mazdēsn, rōšn or rōšan, aδaκ or aig, šικanj or šκanj, giyān or gyān, yazat or yazd, awiš or ōš, druyist or drīst or drust or durust, hačaδar or azēr.One thing is clear: a biased approach will not lead to convincing results. On the strength of the preconceived notion, carried forward from the study of the Avesta (where matters are equally dubious), that the metre is a purely syllabic one, the Pahlavi poems were made to suffer a great deal of emendation; where the usual procedure of omitting inconvenient words produced lines too short to fit into the scheme, either words were added or their pronunciation distorted

Art · Literature · Metre · Poetry · Rhyme · Syllabic verse · Byzantine Studies and History · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Mathematics · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub