PERSIA HISTORY, LANGUAGE, LITERATURE 363 



Greek in classic beauty, but this is equally true of any other Oriental 

 literature. Persian literature has special claims of its own, and these 

 are such as to allow it to rank high when compared with ancient 

 models, and assign it a position of distinction in the line of epic, 

 lyric, and descriptive poetry, when judged by modern standards. 



Viewed in its broadest sense, the literature of Persia comprises all 

 the literary monuments of Iran conceived as a national entity, and 

 covers a period of more than twenty-five centuries. From the fact that 

 "the book of records of the chronicles," according to Esther (vi, 1), 

 was brought and read before King Ahasuerus, or Xerxes, we may infer 

 the existence of annals, chronicles, and historical accounts, which were 

 written and kept long before the days of Xerxes. 



The Avesta, our oldest book in Iranian literature, is of importance 

 chiefly because of its religious character and the light which it throws 

 upon the conditions of early Media and Bactria; but some of the 

 epic passages in its Yashts show that there must have been even 

 earlier some sort of national literature in the form of annals or 

 chronicles, lays or ballads, legends or mythical stories, traces of 

 which survive in the Shah Namah, or Persian Book of Kings. The 

 Avestan Gathas, or Psalms of Zoroaster, moreover, ring with the 

 voice of a prophetic soul inspired by the greatness of his calling, and 

 this lends a literary tone to the force of these metrical compositions. 

 The Old Persian inscriptions have already been alluded to, and 

 mention has been made of our interest in these rock-cut records of 

 the great Achsemenian kings. Even the sober Pahlavi, or Middle 

 Persian literature, twice turns aside from its sacerdotal, scientific, 

 or exegetical style of composition to give us an early instance of 

 the Eastern biographical and historical romance, the Karnamak, 

 or Gests of King Ardashir Papakan, and the Yatkar, or Battle of the 

 Zoroastrian crusader Zarir. 



Most interesting is the Modern Persian literature. This sprang up 

 a century or more after the Arab conquest, as a revival of the old 

 feeling of national pride and an effort to recall the lost glory of Iran 

 then gave rise to a kind of literary renaissance. The names of the 

 earlier poets of this era, like Rudaki and Dakiki, might be mentioned 

 as worthy of praise, but we pass them over to pay homage to Firdausi, 

 the Father of Persian Song, who wrote before the date A.D. 1000, and 

 cast into the mould of undying verse the annals of Persia down to 

 the Arab invasion. This work, a poem of 60,000 couplets, he called 

 Shah Namah, Book of Kings; it ranks as a world-epic and entitles 

 him to his proud name Firdausi, Poet of Paradise. His last poem, 

 on the romantic story of the passion of Potiphar's wife Zulaika for 

 the youthful Joseph, though written in old age, is a masterpiece and 

 full of fervid imagination, while his panegyric and his satire on his 

 patron but deceiver, Mahmud of Ghazni, is unsurpassed in power 



