Table Of ContentKāshefi’s Anvār-e Sohayli
Studies in
Persian Cultural History
Editors
Charles Melville (Cambridge University)
Gabrielle van den Berg (Leiden University)
Sunil Sharma (Boston University)
volume 11
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/spch
Kāshefi’s Anvār-e Sohayli
Rewriting Kalila and Dimna in Timurid Herat
By
Christine van Ruymbeke
leiden | boston
Cover illustration: Surat-e sang-posht ke morghabiha be-hava mibarand (The Tortoise and the two Ducks
(I,22)). Lithograph edition of Kalileh-o Demneh, 1282 AH sh., Tehran, p. 95. By kind permission of the
Archive of Persian lithographed illustrations, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Marzolph, Göttingen, Germany.
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xxi
List of Stories and Taxonomy xxiii
1 Kāshefi Composes the Anvār-e Sohayli 1
1 The Author and the Patron 1
1.1 “Abject Hosayn, the Preacher, Known as the Discloser” 1
1.2 Shining Sohayli, the Patron 6
1.3 “The Proper Function of the Critic is to Save the Tale from the
Artist who Created it” 8
2 The Contents of Kāshefi’s Dibācheh 12
2.1 On How to Read the Text and on Who is Supposed to Read It 13
2.2 The Noble Hereditary Line 17
3 Rewriting Nasrollah Monshi’s KD Version 32
3.1 Neither Parricide nor Plagiarism 33
3.2 But Rather: Cannibalism, Mimesis and Appropriation 37
4 The Subject Matter of the AS 49
5 The Table of Contents 52
5.1 “A Title Must Muddle the Reader’s Ideas, Not Regiment Them” 52
5.2 Exit Borzuyeh 59
5.3 The Fourteen Bābs 60
5.4 The Envoi 65
2 Being Pernickety about “Animal Fables” 67
1 Fussing about “Fables” 67
1.1 And What about Logos Pseudes Eikonizoon Aletheian? 69
1.2 The Lion and the Hare (I,13) 71
1.3 Redundant or Impertinent Pro- and Epimythia? 75
2 Nit-picking on Zabān-e Vohush 77
2.1 Homo Homine Lupus 77
2.2 Characterisation’s Lack of Significance 79
2.3 The Brutes Speak 82
2.4 And What Do They Say? 84
vi contents
3 Animals as Unstable Emblems 87
3.1 Sophisticated Psychological Anthropomorphism 88
3.2 Never Mistake a Jackal for a Fox! 91
3.3 Kalileh’s Parrhesia vs. Demneh’s Rhetoric 95
4 A Bevy of Human Actors 98
4.1 “- […] if I State quite Frankly and Openly that you Seem to me to
be in Every way the Visible Personification of Absolute Perfection. -
What a Perfect Angel you are, Cecily.” 98
4.2 Misogynous Characterisation? 102
5 Humans and Animals 109
5.1 Plausible Human-Animal Interaction 110
5.2 Improbable Vocal Contact between Man and Bird 110
5.3 The Metamorphoses of the Mouse-Girl (IV,11) 113
6 Why Write Animal Stories for a Political Audience? 114
6.1 Back to the Contrapuntal and Impertinent Pro- and
Epimythia 116
6.2 The Story-Telling Technique 118
6.3 Animals to say the Unsayable? 120
6.4 Frank and Oblique Speech 123
6.5 Storytelling as a Methodology of Political Theory 127
3 The Biggest Bees in Kāshefi’s Bonnet: A Thematic Analysis 129
1 Mirrors for Princes 130
1.1 The “Governance of Princes” 135
1.2 The Bees 140
1.3 Regicide Most Foul! 145
1.4 A Rigid Class-System? 148
1.5 Pigeonholing the Professional Vizier and the Occasional Hermit
Advisor 156
1.6 The Forces of Destiny and God’s Selection of his Instrument 160
2 Seeking Useful Friends and Genuine Comrades 167
2.1 As an Elephant in the Quagmire 168
2.2 The Player and the Soother Part 172
2.3 Kalileh’s Suicide and Demneh’s new Friend 175
2.4 The Ring-Dove and the Friends (III) 180
3 Introducing the Trickster-Rhetorician 189
3.1 Grading the Rogues: from Soft Trickster to Sinister
Murderer 192
3.2 The Virtues of the Tongue 203
contents vii
4 Building Appreciation for “Tasteless Bombast” 208
1 Kāshefi’s “Degenerate Style” 208
1.1 Linguistic Torture? 211
1.2 More than Simply “Terpsichorean Pirouettes of Syntax and
Thought” 213
1.3 Kāshefi’s Energising Metaphor 216
1.4 The Antimetabola’s Cognitive Significance 224
2 Prosimetrum 227
2.1 Prosimetrum: Partim Prosa Partim Metro Componens 228
2.2 Like Salt in the Pot 232
2.3 The Ancillary Intertextual Aspect 239
2.4 The Function of the Inclusions 242
2.5 Enlightenment in Absentia 247
3 The Effect of the Verse Quotations and Eqtebās 248
3.1 A Pedagogy of Recognition 258
5 Topical Web, Structural Maze 262
1 The New Double Outer Frame 264
1.1 “Providing no Key to the Origin of the Book” 264
1.2 Kāshefi’s Innovative Frame-Stories 267
1.3 Wrapping Up Each Frame 274
2 The Fourteen Main Stories 276
2.1 Stating the Pedagogy 277
2.2 KD/AS’s Elusive Internal Architecture 281
2.3 The Stories’ Structure as an Essential Tool for their Pedagogical
Aim 284
3 The Embedded Sub-Stories 287
3.1 The Joys of Aviation 289
3.2 Thematic Criss-Crossings 291
3.3 The Sub-Stories’ Relationship to the Embedding Narratives 293
3.4 The Sub-Story as a Miniature Main Story 296
3.5 Kāshefi Adds the Story of the Two Companions, Ghanim and
Salim (I,2) 299
3.6 Kāshefi’s Additions to Ebn-e Madin and the Lark (VIII) 302
4 Shiruyeh Knew That the First Bāb is the Book in a Nutshell 304
6 The Skeleton 312
1 A Skeleton in the Cupboard of Persian Literary Studies! 312
2 Sir William’s 1771 Sugarchest 314
3 A Language Exercise 318
viii contents
7 A Collaborative Effort: The “Noble” Hereditary Line of KD Versions and
Translations in the Persian Tradition 321
1 Concerns, Doubts and Queries 323
2 The Lost Sanskrit Text 325
3 Borzuyeh’s Lost Pahlavi Text 330
4 The Old Syriac Version 335
5 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Arabic KD 338
6 Balʿami’s and Rudaki’s Opus Geminum 343
7 Nasrollah Monshi’s KD Prosimetrum 345
8 Conclusions 349
Bibliography 355
Index 391
Preface
1 Research Strategy
During the course of the present study, I was brought to revisit many received
ideas on the Kalila and Dimna (henceforth KD) text in general and in particular
on Kāshefi’s Anvār-e Sohayli (henceforth AS), its fifteenth-century Persian
rewriting. I hope I have been equal to this task and have done justice to what is
a truly seminal text that has come down to us in numerous and varied versions
and rewriting.1
The text’s avowed scope is to function as a mirror-for-princes (henceforth
MfP) and it is thus through this prism that I have attempted to decode it.
Though this is also the understanding medieval sources appear to hold, the
text is mostly no longer discussed in these terms in contemporary scholar-
ship. This is the source of an enormous injustice towards the KD and the AS.
Above all, I argue against downgrading the text and its stories as light popular
entertainment, labelling their grim contents as pretty and charming children
literature. The current fashion is also to treat KD as a work of fiction debating
on and about morality. The involvement of Kāshefi with Sufism might also
encourage a sweeping esoteric interpretation of the AS text. I argue that these
understandings are misplaced: the author himself in his Dibācheh or Preface,
proposes, indeed imposes, a political angle for his text. Although it is never
obligatory to obey expressions of authorial tyranny, the intention of the text
itself points in this direction. Suddenly, viewed through this kaleidoscope, the
whole puzzle of the KD with all its varied patterns falls into place, shaping a
coherent pedagogy of universal psychological, philosophical and political
breadth and evacuating the puzzlement resulting from superficial readings
and misunderstandings.
My second strategic stance proposes a decoding which does not enclose
Kāshefi’s work in the atmosphere of fifteenth-century Herat. On the contrary,
I attempt to open up the AS, I want my study to be enlightening and useful
within our 21st-century culture. I use help that comes from outside the
Classical Persian Studies field, calling upon research on themes of the lit-
1 Most of the findings of the present research are based on the fifteenth-century rewriting
by Kāshefi, but are equally relevant for the earlier Persian KD version by Nasrollah Monshi
(henceforth NM KD), and for the Arabic versions known as “the Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ KD” (hence-
forth IAM KD). This means that they might also be important for the whole family of KD texts
in all its varied linguistic avatars. I indicate where the discussion specifically relates to the AS
and I mark the differences and nuances with the KD versions.
