New NaqqaliHushang and Kioumars Fight the Black Div
Twenty-one couplets preserve the mixed host, the grandson’s leading role, vengeance and the old king’s death.
The chapter in five texts
| Text | Chapter treatment and distinctive choices |
|---|---|
| F&R English | Twenty-one couplets preserve the mixed host, the grandson’s leading role, vengeance and the old king’s death. |
| Moscow | The reversal of the first fight and closing impermanence maxims remain visible in the printed narrative. |
| Mohl | The battle and reflections appear on pp 17–18; local compression and expansion require sense alignment. |
| Ganjoor | Qmars sh2 has 21 couplets too, but English 5 compresses two Persian couplets and English 17–18 expand one. |
| Khaleghi | The grandson’s command and grandfather’s rear position are retained; the received thirty-year first reign closes with the worldly reflection. |
Parallel text
English left · Persian right. Ganjoor is the reference except where a row names a printed source. Select a number to open the relevant note. G identifiers distinguish digital sections across chapter boundaries.
Narrative and poetic form
Twenty-one couplets preserve the mixed host, the grandson’s leading role, vengeance and the old king’s death.
The defeat reverses Siamak’s helplessness without losing the division of command between generations. The close speaks about the instability of fortune; its meaning should remain attached to mortal life rather than generalized into moral nihilism.
Couplet commentary
Quoted text · evidence · interpretation1–5Grandson, counselor and heir
Ganjoor qmars sh2, 1–6; Moscow I p 31; Mohl I p 17; Khaleghi I p 24. English 5 compresses the summoning and disclosure into one couplet.
Hushang is Siamak’s son and Kioumars’ grandson. His place as dastur beside his grandfather combines affection with counsel; “counselor” preserves the office without insisting on a later bureaucratic system.
The English’s “living line” gathers the source’s memorial and fosterage into a lineage image. It also explains why Kioumars entrusts the next generation with the front of the campaign. The compression of disclosed secrets changes pacing rather than the decision.
6–10The host and its two leaders
Ganjoor qmars sh2, 7–11; Moscow I pp 31–32; Mohl I p 17; Khaleghi I p 24. Paris, predatory animals, other beasts and birds form the army; grandson leads, grandfather follows.
The unusual coalition is essential to the narrative. Retained paris should be understood as the poem’s supernatural beings, not reduced to ordinary human troops or casually substituted with a European fairy type.
“I must depart” carries the old king’s sense of his approaching end. The very next deployment places him behind the army, so departure does not mean that he stays home or dies before the battle. The source’s generational succession remains legible.
11–16The battle repeats and reverses the first killing
Ganjoor qmars sh2, 12–17; Moscow I p 32; Mohl I pp 17–18; Khaleghi I pp 24–25. Fear, animal assault, constriction, seizure and decapitation form the action.
The first battle displayed the prince’s body at the Div’s mercy; the second transfers control of the body to Hushang. “Made the world grow narrow as a cage” develops the Persian constriction into a forceful English simile while preserving its relation of dominance.
The decapitation is explicit in the Persian. It should be distinguished from the later casting down and trampling: the English sequence does not imply two separate killings. “Struck him prone” generalizes the humiliation and leaves the source’s trampling less explicit.
17–19Vengeance and the end of a reign
Ganjoor qmars sh2, 18–19; Moscow I p 32; Mohl I p 18; Khaleghi I p 25. The completion of vengeance is followed by Kioumars’ death.
Two English couplets give the vengeance and completed lifespan separate closures. This expansion makes succession audible without adding an interval specified by the source.
The world remains as an inheritance. Persian 19 also asks who possesses honor before it, an evaluative question not separately developed in English 19. The ensuing worldly reflection carries some of its force, but the rhetorical question itself is compressed away.
20–21Profit, capital and impermanence
Ganjoor qmars sh2, 20–21; Moscow I p 32; Mohl I p 18; Khaleghi I p 25. The capital-consuming world and the final fable comparison are source images.
The English keeps the striking economic metaphor: a promise of gain consumes the very capital on which a life depends. Its change from a specific past construction to a general “may” makes the moral readily applicable beyond Kioumars.
“Neither good nor evil can prevail” is best read here as the impermanence of anyone’s favorable or adverse fortune. The Persian says that good and bad do not remain with anyone; it does not announce that moral action is futile. “Prevail” broadens the maxim, and the context supplies its temporal sense.