A literary history of Persia

122 LITERATURES OF ANCIENT PERSIAThe " remodellings " to which Noldeke alludes consistchiefly, as he points out, of modifications designed to facilitatethe artistic combination and fusion of the different episodes inone epic, and the suppression, in the case of Firdawsi's andother later versions, of such features or phrases as might beoffensive to Muhammadan readers.Of the Sasanian portion of the Epic we still possess onePahlawi element in the J^arnama^-i-t^rta^/ishatr-i-Papa^an^now accessible, both in the original and in a German translation(see p.1 08 supra}. A comparison of this with thecorresponding portion of the Shdhnama (such as will be madefor a portion of this episode in the next chapter) cannot fail toraise greatly our opinion of Firdawsi's fidelity to the sourceson which he drew, for the correspondenceis continuous andremarkable. This f^arnama^ was probably composed aboutA.D. 600, andthe reference of Agathias (A.D. 580) to writtenPersian chronicles of the Kings (j3ao-tAe;ot cupOtpai, irtpmKol/3f'/3Xot, jSautXt/co airofjivii/j.ovEV[j.a.Td)Papak, and Ardashir affords another proofin his account of Sasan,that individualepisodes at least existed in the Pahlawi literature of thisperiod.According to the introduction prefixed to Firdawsi'sShdhnama (A.D. 14256) by order of Baysunghur, the grandsonof Timur (Tamerlane), a complete andrecension* ofThe corrected Pahlawi text of the whole Epic fromBook of Kings. >-, , ,rr , r> ' / \(jayumarth to Khusraw rarwiz (i.e., to A.D. 027)was compiled by the dihqdn Danishwar in the reign of the lastSasanian king Yazdigird III ;and Noldeke remarks on thisthat, whatever may be the worth of this account in itself, theagreement of the versions given by the Arab historians withthe Shdhnama down to the death of Khusraw Parwiz, andtheir wide divergence after that event, afford evidence of itstruth in this particular point ;while the strongly patriotic andlegitimist tone which pervades it sufficiently provecompiled under royal supervision and patronage.that it was