Rudaba

Summary

Rudaba is the princess of Kabul in the Shahnameh, daughter of King Mehrab and his wife Sindukht, wife of Zal and mother of Rostam. Her father was a descendant of Zahhak, the serpent-shouldered king; he ruled Kabul and paid tribute to Zal's father Sam.

Zal visited Kabul, and Mehrab went out to him with gifts, then came home and praised him to his wife and daughter: no paladin on earth can tread his steps, he is a lion in heart and an elephant in strength; he has one defect, his hair is white, yet this white hair becomes him. Rudaba blushed and loved him before she had seen him; Zal had heard of her beauty and loved her too. She confided in her damsels, who chided her at first and then helped her; they went gathering roses by Zal's camp until he spoke with them, and brought his message back. Zal came to her palace by night; she stood on the roof, took off her wimple and let her tresses down over the battlements until they reached the ground, and said: paladin, gird up your loins and seize these black tresses which hang down beside me, all dedicated to you. Zal kissed them and said: may no sun shine when I lay a wanton hand upon my Life and put a spearpoint to this wounded heart; he took a lasso from his servant, threw it, and the noose caught and he climbed. That night they pledged themselves: Zal swore he would never break his troth though he wore a shroud, and Rudaba that none but Zal would be her lord; at dawn Zal let himself down by his lasso.

The marriage was forbidden: the archimages fell silent when Zal asked them, because Zahhak was Mehrab's grandsire and King Manuchehr detested both houses. Sindukht learned of it from the woman who carried the messages, dragged her by the hair, and then heard from her daughter that one hair of Zal was worth the world to her. Mehrab was so enraged that he would have killed his daughter, and Sam marched on Kabul with an army; Sindukht went out to Sam with gifts and talked with him until he relented. Then the archimages tested Zal with riddles before Manuchehr and he answered them, and the astrologers foretold that from these two would come a hero, the hope and pillar of Iran's throne, and the king consented to the marriage.

When Rudaba was with child the burden weighed on her until she withered, and she told her mother: I cry for help night and day; my time has come but not deliverance. Then she swooned, and Zal remembered the plume of the Simurgh: he kindled fire and burned some of it, the air grew dark and the bird swooped down and said: from this Cypress will come a noble babe, but his birth will not be natural; bring a dagger, find a skilful man, make the lady drunk with wine to ease her pain, let him pierce her side, take the lion from its lair and stitch the wound; then bruise a herb I will show you with milk and musk, dry it in the shade, dress the wound, and rub my plume over it. They did so, and a child like a lion came forth; his mother slept a day and a night, and when she woke and saw him she said, "I am delivered, the grief is over", and they named him Rostam.

The idea her story turns on is that a house people hate bears the one who protects them. Rudaba is of Zahhak's line, the king whose shoulder-serpents ate the brains of young men, a house all Iran detests, yet from her comes Rostam, the greatest guardian of Iran's throne. And the way there is hers to choose: she loves before she sees, sends her damsels ahead to seek, lets down her tresses as a rope, swears and keeps her oath until her father, Sam and the king consent. Even then her son is born only through a wound in her body, healed by the knowledge of the bird that raised her husband.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method: the Persian essays do not read her name, only those of her son Rostam and of the Simurgh. Scholars take Rūdāba from rōd, river, and āb, water, "she of the River Water". We read rōd with Arabic rawd: Lane gives rāda l-kalaʾ, he sought herbage; rāʾid, one sent before a party to seek herbage and water for them; arwada, he acted gently, went at a leisurely pace. And we read āb with ʿubāb, the main body and waves of a torrent, as on the Afrasiab page, with ʿ dropped. The name is then "she who seeks the water", and that is Rudaba in the story: she seeks Zal and sends her damsels ahead of her as scouts.

Linguistic Root

Forms of the name

Shahbazi writes in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, after Skjærvø, that the name "means literally 'she of the River Water'", and does not rule out two other derivations: from Avestan raoδa-, "growth, stature", giving "possessed of bright growth", or from **rauta-*, "child", compare Persian rōd, "darling child".

Rawd and rāʾid

The reading covers both rōd and āb. Rōd has r, a long ō and d, the consonants of Arabic r-w-d in order. Lane: rāda, he sought herbage and water; rāda ahlahu manzilan, he sought a place for his people to alight; rāʾid, one sent before a party to seek herbage, water and places where rain has fallen, whence "fever is the rāʾid of death"; arwada, he acted gently; rāwadahu ʿan al-amr, he sought it of him gently. The word is gentle seeking, going ahead of others to the water. In the story Rudaba sends her damsels ahead to Zal's camp and seeks him herself with soft words until he comes.

For āb we read on the Afrasiab page ʿubāb: Lane, the main body of a torrent, its height and its waves, and ʿabba, to drink water without taking breath, with ʿ dropped.

What remains is that Persian rōd means river, not seeking, so the reading takes from the three consonants an Arabic sense other than that of the Persian word, and āb may simply be Persian "water". The reading stays open until an r-w-d word for a river or running water is found.

Key Mythic Narratives

After Rostam's birth

Shahbazi notes that Rudaba had a second son, Zavara, Rostam's lieutenant in the wars with Turan; both fell by the treachery of a half-brother, and Rudaba was so grief-stricken that she lost her sanity for a time; she was still alive when Bahman destroyed Sistan. Thaʿālibī says she took part in the education of Siyavash. Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Rudāba".

The house of Kabul

Shahbazi also reports the view that Mehrab's house came from the Dahae, an Iranian tribe that formed the core of the Arsacid invaders of Parthia in the third century BCE, and that their enemies disparagingly made Zahhak their ancestor; down to the fifth Islamic century the Sam dynasty of Ghur traced its descent from Zahhak.

Symbolic Reading

The Persian reread essay reads the Simurgh as a cosmic network of knowledge: a bird that knows everything and rescues heroes in their hour of crisis, whose feathers yield the remedy, that is, knowledge heals. In Rostam's birth that knowledge appears as knowledge of the body: wine that dulls the pain, the cut and the stitching, the herb bruised with milk and musk. The bird does not work a miracle; it teaches people a craft.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Among the Greeks Asclepius is born from his mother Coronis's side: Artemis killed her while she was with child, and when she lay on the pyre Apollo said he could not bear his child to die with his mother, and took him from her body. Both births come from the side by a knowing hand; the difference is that Coronis died, and Rudaba lived by the Simurgh's knowledge.

Shahbazi notes that the maiden who lets her hair down the wall for her lover to climb recalls the story of Rapunzel recorded by the Brothers Grimm; this is a likeness of tale type, not evidence of a route between them.

In Mesopotamia Etana rises on the eagle's back to seek the "plant of birth" for his wife, as the Simurgh comes down with the knowledge of birth for Rudaba: in both a great bird brings what a hard birth needs.