Khotanese and Sogdian Versification

 There are lines which are built only from one word, and consequently they cannot have more than one stress.

He therefore concludes that it is ―impossible to give any rules for defining the structure of a Middle Iranian verse line" (p. 405).

We can now summarize this section. As mentioned above, there are many different views about the metrical principles of Middle Iranian including Parthian poetry. Because of the complications in the writing system of Middle Persian, one cannot be sure of the exact pronunciation of many words, as Henning notes: ―[We] cannot tell how the words were pronounced by the authors, it makes a considerable difference to the meter (whatever it was) whether we put down paδak or paig, mazdayasn or mazdēsn, rōšn or rōšan, aδak or aig, …‖

(Henning 1950:641).

The main question for many scholars has centered around the question of why is the number of syllables per line and the number of stresses per line irregular. Another point of discussion has centered around the role and position of the pauses.

It seems that the rhyme has no important role in Pahlavī poetry. According to Henning (1950), there is no rhyme in Middle Iranian poetry: ―I will say straightway that in the whole of the Western Iranian material so far recognized as poetical there is not a single rhyme in the strict sense (p. 646).‖ But the poem Andarz-ē Dānāgān does have a rhyme pattern like a Qaside. Henning questions the date that it is claimed that the poem was written. He asks doubtfully: ―Is this an ancient poem, or merely an imitation of Persian models?‖ (op. cit., p.

648).

We will suggest that perhaps the metrical form of certain modern Iranian languages such as Gūrānī, especially as observed in the corpus of the religious verses of the Yārsān community, can help us to understand the metrical form of Old and Middle Iranian languages. In a language like Gūrānī, the metrical forms seem to have preserved the older forms. We will take up this topic in Chapter 6.

Khotanese. While in Old Khotanese, the metrical system is based on the quantity of syllables, in Late Khotanese, the metrical system is based on stress and its distribution in the line. In other words, late Khotanese shows transition from a quantitative system to an accentuation system. Emmerick (1968b) believes that in Old Khotanese, the end of each line is iambic or trochaic, while in Late Khotanese, a regular system cannot be recognized. In Old Khotanese, each line is divided in two half lines that end in a cadence, while in Late Khotanese, each line ends in an accented syllable which is then followed by an unaccented syllable.

Dresden (1962) recognized that in some samples, the distribution of syllables in the line was not regular. The only regular pattern was the number of stressed syllables (four or five).

For example, he illustrates the following schema from Bhadracaryādeśanā 47r3-4 (pp. 48-49):

- -' - -' - - - -' - -' - -' - - - -' - -' - - - - -' - - - -' - -' - -' - - -' - - - - -' - - -' - - - -' - -' -

As one can see from the above schema, the number of syllables and the distribution of stressed syllable are irregular. In the first and third lines the number of syllables is eleven, in the second it is thirteen, and in the fourth it is fourteen syllables.

Similarly, in Sogdian poetry, stress also plays an important role. E. Provasi (2009) has attempted to give an overview of the structure of Sogdian versification. The nature of syllables in Sogdian is different than in the West Iranian languages (Parthian and Middle Persian), as the arrangement of syllables is based on different rules than Middle Iranian syllabicity. In Sogdian, one differentiates between heavy and light syllables. Provasi is mainly concerned with the syllable types. He uses the same method for analyzing metrical systems that Boyce (1954) used for the Parthian version of the Huyadagmān text. Provasi also analyzed the Sogdian version of the Huyadagmān text. He presents the hypothesis that the text includes a stanza form, and each stanza is composed of four short lines. Two topics treated in this article include the number of syllables per line and the selection of the syllables that carry the stress. Provasi comes to a similar conclusion as Boyce. According to Provasi, the first half-line is longer than the second half-line. For the first line there are between six and ten syllables, and for the second line there are between six and nine syllables. For all lines he calculates from a minimum of thirteen and a maximum of eighteen syllables.

In his examples, one can observe that in each line there are three stressed syllables, while in a couple of lines, there are six stressed syllables. Here, we look at one of his examples:

(6) [H.I 3a]

Wispa rāz patγusča taγu zδuṇte paγuṇte awu δwa zāwar ᴗᴗ x' ᴗᴗx' ᴗᴗ x'ᴗ ᴗx'ᴗ ᴗx' ᴗ x'ᴗ

(In the scansion ᴗ indicates a light syllable and x' indicates a stressed syllable.)

According to Provasi (2009:350-367), there are certain rules that determine which syllable can carry the stress in the line. He summarizes the main rules as follows: (1) The heavy syllable carries the stress. (2) If the word does not have any heavy syllables, then the stress falls on the final syllable. (3) If there are two heavy syllables, then the second one, or the final one, carries the stress.

According to Provasi‘s article, the main point about the metrical system of Sogdian is that, in this language too, syllable stress has a metrical value.

As mentioned earlier, in order to determine the metrical principle of the poetry of a language, it is important to have a thorough knowledge about the prosody and syllable structure of that language. For dead languages, it is especially difficult to obtain such thorough knowledge, and it is therefore difficult to determine the metrical principle of their poetry. As we saw for all Old Iranian languages in my discussion in earlier sections of this dissertation, despite the different proposed analyses of the meter, it was difficult to know which analysis was best. However, in many of these languages, such as Old and Young Avestan, the number of syllables and the existence and placement of caesuras have been accepted as the basis for metrical principles. In contrast, in the Middle Iranian languages, stress has an important role as a metrical constituent.

It will be interesting later in this dissertation to compare the metrical system of some New Iranian languages, such as of Early New Persian and of the folk poetry of some Kurdish and Gūrānī dialects in order to see the similarities and differences with the metrical system of the Old Iranian languages.

It will become clear that some languages, like New Persian, classical Sorani Kurdish, and Kirmānjī (the literary Kurdish of the northern Kurdistan) have used a metrical system that is based on the quantity of syllables, and therefore, their principles differ from those found in

the Old Iranian languages. For this reason, we will concentrate only on Early New Persian, the fahlavīāt, the folk poetry of Kurdish and Gūrānī, and classical Gūrānī poetry.