The Correction of Some Verses of ‘Onsori Divan

Abstract

The necessity of recorrecting some Persian prose and poetic texts is an undeniable fact, especially the texts before the raid of Mughals. Unfortunately, the main problem of corrected texts is not just the lack or not using of authentic manuscripts but the reason should be sought in the method used by correctors and their lack of attention to several literary and linguistic principles. The negligence of such principles has occurred in the correction of ‘Onsori’s divan and caused his verses to be far from authenticity yet. This article aims to study and correct some verses of his divan which have been recorded incorrectly in Yahya Gharib (second impression, Tehran, 1344) and Mohammad Dabir Siaghi (second impression, Tehran, 1363) publications. Most corrections have been done on the basis of grammatical and semantic criteria and with regard to the conventions of old Persian poetry, especially methods of rhyming and imagery. Doing so, in addition to manuscripts used by the mentioned correctors in their correction, another manuscript which is older than those ones is also used in this study. Undoubtedly, in selecting the correct record, the author has not judged on the basis of subjective criteria and has not considered the stylistic characteristics of the poet as proven and absolute data. The author has always been loyal to the principle that any guess and hypothesis should have a background of textual criticism otherwise analogical and subjective corrections are created to which most of the prose and poetic texts have been subjected until now and various kinds of distortion are found in them.

Keywords

• Onsori divan
• text correction
• Persian poetry
• Yahya Gharib
• Mohammad Dabir Siaghi