New NaqqaliA Daughter Is Born to Iraj
The survival of Iraj’s line depends first on an enslaved or serving woman and then on a daughter, before the expected male avenger can be born.
The chapter in five texts
| Text | Chapter treatment and distinctive choices |
|---|---|
| F&R English | Fourteen couplets separate the daughter’s birth, growth and marriage, with a fuller pedigree than Ganjoor’s compressed notice. |
| Moscow | Dynastic continuity passes through Iraj’s daughter before Manuchehr appears. |
| Mohl | P 83 explicitly supports nephew status and descent from Jamshid beyond the short digital marriage notice. |
| Ganjoor | Sh12.1–10 contains the whole daughter episode in ten couplets. |
| Khaleghi | P 125 preserves the short marriage notice in the main text and longer parentage and lineage material in the apparatus. |
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
The passage is best read as a necessary female bridge in the dynasty, not a disposable pause before the hero’s birth. The English’s tenderness toward the child supports that reading; the note restores the mother’s less euphemistic source status.
Couplet commentary
Quoted text · evidence · interpretation1–5Mah-Afarid and a new hope
Ganjoor identifies Mah-Afarid as a serving woman and explicitly calls her کنیزک, carrying Iraj’s child. The English’s “maid of grace” softens that social designation. Birth brings a daughter.
The woman’s position should not disappear behind beauty-language. The father’s hope concerns vengeance and dynastic continuity; the daughter’s birth is no failure of the woman or proof that she lacks value.
6–9The daughter is raised and resembles Iraj
The child receives collective care and grows in luxury; the narrator sees Iraj’s likeness in her.
The English restores attention from a disappointed military expectation to actual care. This daughter is indispensable to succession even though the plot seeks a later male avenger. Her resemblance carries continuity through the female line.
10–14Pashang and the fuller pedigree
Ganjoor compresses the marriage to Pashang into one couplet. Mohl p 83 explicitly calls Pashang a brother’s son and connects him to Jamshid’s stock, supporting the English’s nephew and lineage details. Khaleghi p 125 gives the short marriage notice in the main text and records expanded parentage and lineage material in its apparatus.
The named Pashang here should not automatically be conflated with every later character of the same name. The English pedigree has a printed basis; it is not an inference drawn from Ganjoor’s single marriage couplet. The distinct main-text and apparatus presentations should remain visible.