Middle Persian and Parthian

The poetic corpus of Parthian literature includes the two long poems, Draxt-ī Asūrīg and Ayādgār-ī Zarērān, as well as Manichean hymns like Huyadagmān (45 verses), Angad Rōšnān (139 verses), the holiday hymns (‗Sundays, Mondays‘) as well as the bēma hymns and other hymns. There are also two long hymn cycles in Middle Persian: Gōvišn īg grīv zīndag ‗The Speech of the Living Soul‘ and Gōvišn īg grīv rōšn ‗The Speech of the Light Soul‘. There are also some short poems in Middle Persian called the Andarz texts which are found in the text of Jamasp-Asana (for more information about Middle Persian and Parthian poetry, see Henning 1950; Boyce 1954; 1960; Tafazzoli 1999; Rezayi Baghbidi 2009;

Asmussen 1975; Ort 1967).

Benveniste (1930, 1932) began to work systematically on the metrical system of the two long poetic works, Draxt-ī Asūrīg and Ayādgār-ī Zarērān. For Ayādgār-ī Zarērān, he realized for the first time that the texts are composed in poetry. Before him, certain scholars like W. Geiger (1890) and Nöldeke (1892) had compared Ayādgār-ī Zarērān with the Dāstān-e pādēšāhī-ye Guštāsp³⁸ in the national epic poem Šāhnāme.³⁹ According to Benveniste, Ayādgār-ī Zarērān had Arsacid roots, or it was a Sasanian adaptation of an Arsacidian work.

Benveniste hypothesized that the copyists of the two above-mentioned long poetic works did not recognize the poetic form of the texts and made many mistakes, adding or deleting words without consideration of the metrical system. He assumed that, in each verse line, there were six syllables, and on very rare occasion, five syllables. He also assumed that a strophe was composed of either four, five, or six verses. He also reconstructed the texts in poetic form based on a metrical system, but he also sometimes deleted, added, or corrected words wherever the existing lines did not reflect his system. For example, in §32-33 in Ayādgār-ī Zarērān, which is in Benveniste‘s work ―Le mémorial de zarēr, poème pahlave mazdéen‖

(1930:262), he omitted three words, brāt, pas, and pa asmān, which he found to be unimportant. In the end, Benveniste concluded that the metrical system of the Pahlavī text Ayādgār-ī Zarērān was based on the number of syllables, and that it was descended from Arsacid poetry.

38 Ferdosi in the Šāhnāme has pointed out that this part belongs to poet Daqīqī (see Geiger 1980 and Nöldeke 1892; Māhyār Navābī 2003; Khāleqi Mutlaq 1990).

39 A detailed bibliography about the work on this collection is found in the Yādgār Zarīrān by Yaħyā Māhyār Navābī (2003) and Bo Utas (1975).

According to Henning‘s studies (1933; 1942; 1950), the metrical system of Middle Iranian poetry was based on a certain number of stresses per line verse. Henning (1950) argued that the metrical system of Pahlavī cannot be based on the number of syllables, and so the number of syllables per line in Pahlavī verses is variable. According to Henning, in Draxt-ī Asūrīg, the average number of syllables per line is twelve, with the maximum being fourteen and the minimum ten. For Manichean Middle Persian lines, Henning asserts that the number of syllables varies from a maximum of fifteen and a minimum of nine, with the average being twelve. Therefore, he suggested that the metrical system of Pahlavī is accentual: ―The alternative theory, namely that the meter is accentual, seems to offer better prospects‖ (op. cit., 641).

According to Henning, in each line there are three stressed syllables, but the number of unstressed syllables is open. Thus, a line does not have a fixed number of syllables.

Mary Boyce (1950) studied this topic carefully. She tried to give a survey of the metrical system of Parthian poetry based on the hymns, Huyadagmān and Angad Rōšnān. For both works, Boyce made counts of first the number of syllables in each hymn cycle and then the number of syllables in each half line. According to her study, the number of syllables in each line in Angad Rōšnān is between eight and sixteen, and in Huyadagmān, it is between ten and seventeen.

Boyce agreed with Henning that the metrical system of Western Middle Iranian poetry was based on stressed syllables. But she did not agree with Henning on the distribution and number of syllables per line. Boyce admitted that the placement of stress in the verse lines in Midddle Iranian is uncertain (op. cit., p. 47). She also observed that in most verse lines in Huyadagmān and Angad Rōšnān, there were four stressed syllables, and not three, and in each half verse line, there were only two stressed syllables (op. cit., 48). She considered the three-stressed-syllable verse line suggested by Henning as not corresponding to reality, because there are many lines that have only two words, and consequently they can have only two stressed syllables. Boyce proposed four basic patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables (with the possibility that the unstressed syllables can be increased) in each verse line as follows:

A unstressed + stressed + unstressed + stressed

B unstressed + stressed + unstressed + stressed + unstressed C unstressed + stressed + stressed + unstressed

D stressed + unstressed + unstressed + stressed (Boyce 1954:49)

Lazard (1985) also analyzed the metrical system of the hymns, Huyadagmān and Angad Rōšnān. He focused on the weight of syllables. According to him, syllables may be either heavy or light. He agreed that stress played the important role in Middle Iranian poetry of creating rhythm by means of recurrence. According to Lazard, only heavy syllables can carry stress.

Christiane Reck (2004) analyzes some Manichean hymns in Middle Persian and Parthian.

Reck‘s method is similar to that of Boyce‘s, which she draws on. Reck also tests the hypotheses of Henning and Lazard. She concludes that the number of stressed syllables in each verse line is based on the number of syllables. Therefore, she agrees with the hypothesis of Henning that there are three or four stressed syllables per verse line. The verse lines that contain ten syllables have four stressed syllables, and the half verse lines that contain seven syllables have three stressed syllables.

Reck also considers the caesura to be an important metrical constituent (op. cit., pp. 84-85). According to her analysis, a caesura has an important role from two perspectives. From a horizontal perspective, the place of caesura is found in the middle of the half verse line so that the tact before it builds the rhythm. From a vertical perspective, the caesura divides the verse lines in the strophes and the verse lines into two half verse lines.

Shaked (1970) also considered the caesura and its position in the line to count as a metrical constituent in Middle Iranian poetry. The position of the caesura in the line is marked in the hymn cycles by one or two dots or a space between the dots that appears in the middle and sometimes at the end of the line (Boyce 1954:24-25).

According to Shaked, the melodic character could be the main factor determining the metrical principle. In addition, he argues that this can explain the problem of the distribution of stress and the existence of unequal syllables in the strophes: "It is possible, for example, that each poetic compositon was attached to a definite melodic accompaniment or to a specific tune, which influenced the rhythmic pattern without setting it within too rigid a scheme" (p. 397).

But Shaked (1970) doubted the hypotheses proposed by Henning and Boyce, that stress can be the metrical princple for Middle Iranian poetry. There are two reasons for this:

 Even when one does not count the prepostions, particles, and clitics, there are more than three syllables in some lines that carry the stress.

 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.