Matn/Pizhūhī-i Adabī (Mar 2022)

The Study of the Authenticity of the Old Burzō-nāma Sections and its Relation with Ferdowsi's Shāh-nāma (Based on the Textual Criticism of its Manuscripts)

  • Farzad Ghaemi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.22054/ltr.2020.36896.2461
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 26, no. 91
pp. 179 – 202

Abstract

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The Burzō-nāma is one of the most famous epics after the Shāh-nāma, which, despite the recent studies of the last two centuries, there are still many uncertainties about it. The small or old Burzō-nāma, the first part of this two-part epic, has remained largely an annexed story to the Shāh-nāma. This research, for the first time, has tried to clarify the textual relations of this work with Shāh-nāma by analyzing more than 50 manuscripts of Burzō-nāma, based on textual criticism. According to these results, the author of the work wrote the text in the continuation of the story of “Bijan and Manije”. Although at the beginning of the story, with flashback technique, he briefly reminded her mother's pregnancy and her birth to continue Sohrāb's fate. Due to contradictions in the text, in most manuscripts, the scribes deleted this primitive reminder. But in a small number of manuscripts, they transferred it to the continuation of “Rostam and Sohrāb”, and changed the king of Iran from Kei-khosrow to Kāvus. They also deleted the “Soosan” episode and added an episode about the death of Borzō at the end of the story. Of the four episodes of the poem, the only annexation to the poetry is the episode of the death of Borzō, which was not in the original manuscript, and no mention was made of his death. For this reason, the ending of the poem was an open-end and another poet has been able to continue it.

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