[ back ] 1. For an excellent and concise survey of Iranian and Persian epic, see Davidson 2009. On the orality of the Šāhnāme, see the authoritative study by Davidson (1994:19–72 and 168–169); and also Davidson 1988. For criticism of Davidson’s application of the precepts of the Oral-Formulaic School to (and against the orality of) the Šāhnāme, see Omidsalar 1996:235–242; de Blois 1992:42–58; and de Blois 1998:269–270. For a response to the critiques, see Davidson 1998:63–68 (= Davidson 2000:9–28); also Davidson 2000:59–69. For a study of the sources of the Šāhnāme, making allowance for both the oral and written components of the work, see Davis (1996:48–57), who favors oral material for the mythological and legendary sections, and written sources for the “historical,” that is, the predominantly Sasanian, portions of the Šāhnāme: “We should perhaps shift our perspective of the poem from one deriving largely from written prose texts, perhaps supplemented by oral materials … to one deriving, at least in its earlier mythological and legendary portions, substantially from oral verse performances … supplemented at some points by written prose sources” (56). See also more recently Yamamoto 2003, esp. 8–19, 60–80, 81–109, with a cautious analysis of the sources, as well as the written and oral characteristics of the Šāhnāme; also 51–52, 140, for a definition of the Oral-Performance Model (OPM), on the strength of whose structural and thematic criteria Yamamoto seeks “to examine the role played by oral tradition in the genesis of written narrative texts.” Through analysis of a section of the Key Khosrow episode in Šāhnāme’s Rostam cycle (81–109), she arrives at the conclusion that the Šāhnāme represents a written composition that enacted oral performance on paper, a result of the exposure of its author, a listener to heroic narratives, to the form and techniques of oral performance: “This suggests that Ferdowsi modeled this particular story … intuitively on oral performance, the form and technique of which were deeply imprinted in his consciousness through his experience as a listener; this was probably how he thought of heroic narratives” (Yamamoto 2003:141). Compare also the stern (and as always refreshing) review of Omidsalar (2005). For a vigorous repudiation of Šāhnāme’s orality, compare Omidsalar 2002. Most recently, Rubanovitch (2012:653–660) has pronounced herself against the orality of the Šāhnāme: “Theories of oral composition thus appear to be hardly effective in dealing with the Shāh-nāma, whose author conceived of his work as a book to endure and become a monument (yādgār) to his name—an aspiration in line with established written literary tradition of Firdausī’s time” (659). See also the noteworthy remarks of Vevaina (forthcoming). For recent works on the orality of the Iranian epic tradition, see notably Skjærvø 2009c; Skjærvø 2008; Skjærvø 2005–2006; Skjærvø 2005; Skjærvø 1999; Skjærvø 1998a; Skjærvø 1998c; Skjærvø 1996a; Skjærvø 1996b; and Skjærvø 1995.

[ back ] 2. Text and translation according to Skjærvø (unpublished).

[ back ] 3. For the text of the Ayādgār ī Zarērān, see Monchi-Zadeh 1981, to be consulted only in conjunction with MacKenzie 1984:155–163. For studies on the Ayādgār ī Zarērān, see Shaki 1986:257–271; Utas 1975:409–411; still Benveniste 1932:244–293; and Nöldeke 1892:1–46.

[ back ] 4. See Skjærvø 1997 [2000]:99n1: “In my commentary on the Paikuli inscription I pointed out several parallels between this inscription and other Iranian literature: Avestan, Old Persian, and Pahlavi, notably the fact that the punishment of the traitor Wahnām, who was put on ‘mutilated donkey’ (xar ī rišt) and led to Narseh’s court, corresponds to the punishment of the Turanian king Arǰāsp by the hero Spandyād in the Ayādgār ī Zarērān, where Spandyād seizes Arǰāsp, cuts off one of his hands, feet, and ears, burns out one of his eyes, sets him on a donkey with its tail cut off [emphasis mine] and sends him home.”