Notes · Book D2Homahyi and the Founding of Darab’s Line

D2.1Homahyi Abandons Her Son Darab on the River

Homahyi reigns justly, hides her pregnancy, and gives the baby to a nurse while telling the court he died. When his face begins to recall Bahman, she has a sealed coffer made, packs it with jewels, and casts it into the Farat at midnight.

And cast it in Farat that very night: Farat is the Euphrates, and the choice of river makes the oldest form of this story literal. The legend of Sargon of Akkad has the future king set adrift on the Euphrates in a basket of rushes and drawn out by a man who worked at the water, who raised him in his own humble trade — which is exactly what happens in the next chapter. Moses among the bulrushes and Perseus in his chest on the sea are the same tale. Ferdowsi tells it with no comment at all.

A royal jewel, splendid, large, and bright: The jewel bound on the baby’s arm is the recognition token, and the plot turns on it twice: the washerman’s wife keeps this one stone unsold when all the rest is gone (D2.2), and Rashnavad sends it to the queen (D2.6). It is the only piece of stage machinery in the story, and Ferdowsi works it quietly.

Fair Homahyi then set the crown in place: Homahyi is one of very few women who reign in their own right in the Shahnameh; the others come at the very end of the Sasanian line (III, E9). Middle Persian tradition knows her as Humāy Chihrzād — the second name the poem gives her at D1.5 — and counts her reign among the just ones, which is how Ferdowsi treats it here, in the same breath as the crime.

D2.2Darab Is Raised by a Washerman

The washerman brings the coffer home to his wife, who has just buried their own baby. They keep the child, name him Darab, sell the jewels, and move sixty farsangs away. The boy will not learn the laundry trade; he demands schooling, then horsemanship.

Upon the third day, Darab was his name: The etymology is a folk one: the child is named dar āb, ‘in the water’. The name in fact belongs to the old royal line — Old Persian Dārayavauš, the Darius of the Greeks — and Persian tradition divided that one name between two kings, father and son, Darab and Dara.

Once I have learned the Zand-Avesta’s lore: The zand is properly the Middle Persian translation and commentary of the Avesta; Ferdowsi, like others of his time, treats ‘zand and avestā’ as a single book, the scripture a prince is taught. The boy’s order of business — scripture first, then riding, the bow and polo, and the washing-stone never — is how the poem shows blood telling without saying so.

D2.3Darab Questions His Parentage and Fights the Romans

Darab bars the door, draws a sword on his foster mother, and learns the truth. He buys a horse and arms and enrolls in Rashnavad’s army against a Roman raid. At the muster Homahyi wonders at his bearing, and her milk rises.

The troops passed by for counting, line by line: The muster: squadrons filing past to be counted, names checked against the rolls, pay issued on the ground, and an astrologically chosen hour for the march. The Shahnameh’s armies are always paid and reviewed before they move, and this is court realia rather than epic ornament — it is how an army was actually got onto the road.

The queen; a mother’s milk flowed from her breast: She does not know him; her body does. Ferdowsi keeps the recognition back for three more chapters (D2.6) and marks the moment here with the one sign that cannot be argued with, in a woman who has spent eight years telling her court that the child died.

D2.4How Rashnavad Learned of Darab

A storm scatters the army and Darab shelters under a ruined arch. Three times a voice from the ruin calls him Iran’s Shah and Ardeshir’s son. Rashnavad has him woken; the arch falls the instant he rides clear, and he tells the chief everything.

Shah Ardeshir’s own son is sheltered here: Ardeshir is Bahman, Homahyi’s father and husband (see D1.3), so the voice is telling the sepahbod that the soaked young volunteer under the arch is the rightful king. An unseen voice that proclaims a hidden king, and a building that stands only as long as he needs it, are the poem’s usual signs of the farr; on the farr, see I, A4.1.

At once the ancient arch fell from its height: The marvel is also the proof: the ruin held itself up for him and let go the moment he was clear. Ferdowsi gives Rashnavad no dream and no vision, only falling masonry, and the hard-headed commander is convinced by it — as he is meant to be, since he is about to hand the vanguard to a washerman’s boy.

D2.5Darab Fights the Roman Army

Darab leads the scouts, breaks the Roman lines in two battles, and comes back with a cross in his fist. Offered the pick of the spoil, he takes one spear. The Iranians burn Roman towns until Caesar’s envoy asks for terms.

He slew full forty prelates in that fight: Rum is Christian wherever it appears in the Shahnameh, so a war fought long before Alexander has bishops, monks and a cross in it (on Rum, see I, B10.23). This is not carelessness: the west had to be intelligible, so it is given the shape of the Byzantium on Ferdowsi’s own horizon, and the same thing happens to Philip of Macedon at D3.3.

But chose one spear from all the spoils in sight: Offered everything, he takes a spear and sends the rest back. Refusing the spoil is the mark of the Pahlevan in this poem, and Rashnavad has just paid him its highest compliment: he passes the lord of Rakhsh in fame. The praise lands one generation after Bahman hanged Rostam’s son and carried off his treasure (D1.2, D1.3).

D2.6Homahyi Recognizes Her Son

Caesar’s tribute comes in and the army turns home. Rashnavad questions the foster parents, writes the whole story to Homahyi, and sends the ruby. She reads it, weeps, admits that she cast her son into the Farat for the crown’s sake, and gives alms.

God gave a son I failed to prize or save: Ferdowsi gives the exposure a motive that no other version of this story needs. No oracle compelled her and no jealous king threatened the child: she wanted to keep the crown, and she says so herself, twice in a few lines. The poem lets a reigning monarch confess, and does not excuse her.

The Zand-Avesta, Sadeh’s festive blaze: Her thanksgiving takes the form of endowments — fire-temples, scripture, the fire of Sadeh (I, A2.2). Royal gratitude in the Shahnameh is always measured in what the crown gives away, and this is the standard list; Dara will recite almost the same one from his deathbed, as the faith he hopes a grandson will keep (D4.9).

D2.7Homahyi Seats Darab on the Throne

The queen has a crown, robes and a double throne prepared, and an astrologer picks the day. She bows to her son, scatters gems, sets the crown on him, and asks his pardon. He forgives her; the nobles acclaim him; she yields the reign.

In Bahman’s month, on Shahrivar’s bright day: The Zoroastrian calendar names each of the thirty days as well as the twelve months, so Shahrivar is both the sixth month and the fourth day of every month; on the month names, see I, A7.1. The name is that of the Amahraspand Khshathra Vairya, ‘dominion worth desiring’, who is the patron of just rule and of metals. The astrologer has picked the day of kingship itself.

You may yet find a coffer in the flow: Darab pays his foster parents in gold and cloth and dismisses them with a joke: keep an eye on the river. Then the washerman goes back to his stone, and Ferdowsi gives the last line of the chapter to the laundry rather than the crown — one of the small deflations he likes to set at the end of a triumph.