History or fable: are the tales of the Book of Kings true, and does the poet invent, versify a book, or carry on a living tradition?

Ferdowsi, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Ferdowsi answers

Deem not these legends lying fantasy, as if the world were always in one stay; for most accord with sense, or anyway contain a moral.1 That is how I answered it at the threshold of the book, and I have not changed my answer. A tale may be true as the record of what kings did, or true in what it teaches, and the one who reads wisely will find the second kind even in the stories that seem most fabulous.

As to where the tales came from, I did not invent them. There was an Epic Cycle spread broadcast among the learned archmages, and a paladin of rustic birth, a man of courage, wisdom and rank, an antiquary who ransacked the earth for the legends of the ages past, called hoar archmages out of every clime. He asked them of the annals of the throne and the famed heroes of old time, and as he listened to the men of lore he laid the basis of the famous book.2

So the stories were told by living mouths before they were set down, and a man of learning gathered them. Then came Dakiki, a brilliant youth, who said he would retell these tales in verse. Vicious habits were his friends, and he perished by the hand of his own slave, leaving the tales of yore untold.2 When he fell, my ardent heart turned of itself toward the Iranian throne.

I said that if I could get the book I would retell the tales in language of my own, and I asked of persons more than I can say, fearing that life would not suffice and that I too should leave the work for other hands.2 And I did find a book. It was fulfilled with legends, its words possessed of character and true, its stories very ancient and in prose.

The wits had never thought of rhyming those; no one had thought of linking line to line, a fact that struck this gladsome heart of mine.3 I do not hide that I worked from a book. Nor do I hide what I owed Dakiki: he rhymed the veriest mite, a thousand couplets of feast and fight, but he was my pioneer and he alone, in that he set the Shahs upon the throne.3

I scanned his verses and esteemed them weak, and I set them down beside mine so that the king might hear how inartistic verses ring.3 So I am neither the inventor of these kings nor a man who merely copied a page. The prose was ancient, two thousand years had passed the story o'er, and I took it for a lucky sign and gave it a Persian worthy of it.3

For twenty years and more I kept the work, until I should find one worthy of my treasury.3 As for whether the scholars say I versified a written source or inherited a living tradition, my own account holds both: the dehqān gathered the old men's tales, the prose book carried them, and I chose, ordered and sang them.

The position in brief

The tales are not lying fantasy. Most accord with reason, and those that seem fabulous carry an inner meaning for the one who reads them wisely. They come from an ancient book of kings that a dehqān gathered from the old archmages, and from the dehqāns who still told them; the poet received them, kept their order of kings, and gave them a Persian worthy of them, adding the reflections a sage owes his reader. He does not invent kings; he keeps the memory of a people.4567

Sources

  1. Deem not these legends lying fantasy, As if the world were always in one stay, For most accord with sense, or anyway Contain a moral.
    The Shahnama, Vol. I
  2. The archmages told their legendary store, How this world fared and what kings undertook, And as he listened to the men of lore He laid the basis of the famous book
    The Shahnama, Vol. I
  3. A book fulfilled with legends met my view, Its words possessed of character and true, Its stories very ancient and in prose; The wits had never thought of rhyming those
    The Shahnama, Vol. V
  4. Take not this world in jest, but walk with those Whose steps are right; right as thine end propose If thou wouldst be with men of glorious name. Why do I talk so long? I fail to see A limit to my theme's fertility.
    The Shahnama, Vol. I
  5. IO How the present Book was begun Mine ardent heart turned, when Dakiki fell, Spontaneously toward the Iranian throne; " If I can get the book I will retell," I said, " the tales in language of mine own." 'i 10 THE SHAHNAMA OF PIRDA USt I asked of persons more than I can say, For I was fearful as time passed away That life would not suffice, but that I too Should leave the work for other hands to do.
    The Shahnama, Vol. I
  6. There is a famous one by name Mihran, Who hath attained his fill of earthly lore. He will not sleep or rest him in a city, And liveth but with cattle of the field, Subsisting on the herbs upon the mountains, And not accounting us as fellow-men; His home is with the onager and deer, Apart from habitation and mankind; Naught in the world doth injure him; devout Is he, and of high fortune." To the sage Thus said…
    The Shahnama, Vol. VI
  7. Call we a reprobate and fool that son Who in his father's footsteps hath not trod. Wet be the seed of colocynth or dry It will not savour musk, then where the need That it should change from what should spring thereby By nature if the gardener sow its seed? When any plant is predisposed to earth, It parteth with the sunshine and pure air, Therefrom no foliage or fruit hath birth.
    The Shahnama, Vol. VII

Where the argument is made

  • The Prelude, On the Compilation of the Shāhnāma and How the present Book was begun (vol. I), on the epic cycle gathered by a dehqān from the archmages and the ancient Persian book a friend brought
  • the prelude to the tale of the Div Akvān (vol. III) on the inner meaning of a fabulous tale
  • the prelude to Sohrāb (vol. II)
  • the closing Account of the Completion of the Shāhnāma (vol. IX)
  • the poet's dream of Daqiqi and his verdict on Daqiqi's verses (vol. V)

How the argument was received

The poem's own claim about itself, and the centre of a century of scholarly dispute over whether he versified a written prose source or inherited a living oral art.