Notes · Book B2Garshasp and the Transition to Kayanian Kingship

B2.1Afrasiab Invades after Garshasp’s Death

Zav’s son Garshasp reigns briefly and dies. Pashang, still estranged from Afrasiab over Aghriras, orders him to invade again. The Iranians turn to Zal, who is too old to fight and offers instead his young son Rostam, arming him with Sahm’s ancestral gorz.

Zav had a son, Garshasp, of royal birth: King Garshasp is a shadowy figure who barely has a reign. He should not be confused with the other Garshasp named a few lines later, the dragon-slaying ancestor of Sahm and Rostam, who is the Keresaspa of the Avesta (see A5.9).

From warrior Garshasp it came as heir: The gorz has passed from Garshasp down the family to Sahm, and Zal wielded it against Khazarvan (B1.10). Handing it to Rostam makes him heir to the whole heroic line. Garshasp’s own adventures were later put into verse by Asadi Tusi, Ferdowsi’s townsman, in the Garshaspnameh.

The scent of milk is still upon your breath: Still a Persian idiom: of someone too young for the business at hand, people say that milk can still be smelled on his breath.

The elephant I slew; Mount Sepand fell: Rostam recalls his boyhood feats, told earlier in the poem: killing the maddened white elephant with his grandfather’s gorz, and taking the fortress on Mount Sepand in disguise. They are the heroic childhood that epic requires, like the infant Heracles strangling snakes.

B2.2Rostam Catches Rakhsh

Zal parades the horses of Zabul and Kabul, and Rostam tests each by pressing on its back. Only a fiery bay-piebald colt, guarded by its fierce dam, withstands him. Rostam catches it with his kamand, and the herdsman names the price: Iran itself.

We call him Rakhsh, bay-piebald, fire in hue: Rakhsh is a word for a horse’s color, a mixture of red and white, and it is often connected with rakhshidan, ‘to flash, to shine’. Rakhsh is the most famous horse in Persian literature, as much a character as his rider: he fights, keeps watch and, later in this volume, kills a lion while Rostam sleeps.

The price of Rakhsh is Iran, all its ground: One of the best-known lines in the poem: the horse cannot be bought, because its price is the defense of the country. Horse and rider are paired from the start with the fate of Iran.

The colt stood firm; his back would never bow: A hero proves himself by mastering the one horse no one else can ride. The closest parallel is the young Alexander taming Bucephalus, a story Ferdowsi’s readers would also know from the Alexander romance.

Each night they burned espand against all blight: Espand is wild rue, whose seeds are thrown on hot coals to smoke away the evil eye. Iranians still do it today, at weddings, for a new car or a child’s exam, with a short rhyme against the envious eye. A horse this fine needed protecting.

B2.3Zal Leads Iran against Afrasiab

Zal leads the army out of Zabul in spring, and Afrasiab camps at Khar of Rey. With the armies two farsangs apart, Zal tells his counselors that an army needs a king, and names the one a Mobad has revealed: Kay Qobad, of Fereydoon’s line.

Kay Qobad, sprung from Fereydoon’s great line: With Kay Qobad the Kayanian dynasty begins (see A5.4 on the looser use of kayāni). Kay is the Avestan kavi, a title of the ancient princes of eastern Iran, and Qobad is Kavi Kavata of the Avesta. The Sasanian kings later took his name as Kavad, which Ferdowsi writes Qobad.

A bead was struck in bowl on elephant’s back: The signal to march: a metal bowl carried on an elephant was struck or shaken so that it rang out across the camp. Bells and cymbals mounted on elephants are a recurring sound of the poem’s armies on the move.

B2.4Rostam Brings Kay Qobad from Alborz

Rostam rides to Alborz, breaking through the Turanian outposts, and finds a young prince feasting by a stream who turns out to be Kay Qobad. Qobad tells of a dream of falcons bearing a crown. On the way back Rostam kills Kulun, and he brings Qobad secretly to Zal.

Two white-winged falcons crossed Iran’s bright sky: In the Avesta the royal glory leaves Jamshid in the shape of a bird, usually taken to be a kind of falcon (see A4.1). In Qobad’s dream two falcons bring the crown back to the royal line. Birds of prey are the heralds of kingship throughout Persian story.

I am that Shah, descended from that race: Ferdowsi enjoys the recognition scene. The prince keeps his name back and lets the stranger explain himself, as a hidden heir must, and only then smiles and reveals it. Kay Qobad has been hidden on Alborz, like Fereydoon before him (A5.3).