Siyavash

Summary

Siyavash, son of King Kay Kavus, is the innocent prince of the Shahnameh, Ferdowsi's epic, who is falsely accused and survives the fire, then is murdered as an exile in Turan and avenged by his son Kay Khosrow. The warriors Giv and Tus found in a forest on the Turanian border a girl who had fled her father; they quarrelled over her, the king took her for himself, and she bore Siyavash. Rostam raised him in Zabulistan until he was a horseman, then brought him back to his father. His mother died, and Sudaba, his father's wife and daughter of the king of Hamavaran, fell in love with him and drew him into the women's quarters on the pretext of marrying him to one of her daughters; she tempted him and he refused. She tore her robe, scratched her cheeks and cried out until the palace heard, and told the king: Siyavash took me in his arms, threw the crown from my hair and tore my robe, and I am with child by you and he nearly killed it. The king smelled Siyavash's hands, breast and head and found on Sudaba the scent of wine, rose-water and musk but none of it on Siyavash, and knew him innocent. Sudaba then brought in a pregnant sorceress, who miscarried twins, and presented them as her own babes killed by Siyavash.

The archimages said the truth could be known only if one of the two passed through fire, for heaven lets no harm befall the innocent. The king had two mountains of firewood piled up with a path between them barely wide enough for a horseman, poured black naphtha over them, and two hundred men set them alight. Siyavash came in white raiment and a golden helmet on a black steed, sprinkled camphor over himself as bodies are prepared for burial, prayed to be granted a passage through the mountain of fire, and urged the black horse into it; the flames closed over his head until he could not be seen, and he came out smiling, untouched. The king ordered Sudaba hanged, and Siyavash begged her life and the king pardoned her.

Then Afrasiab, king of Turan, invaded Iran, and Siyavash led the army against him to get away from Sudaba. Afrasiab had a dream that terrified him, sued for peace and gave hostages. Kay Kavus was furious and ordered his son to send the hostages to be killed and resume the war; Siyavash would not break his oath and took refuge with Afrasiab. Afrasiab's counsellor Piran received him with honour and gave him his daughter Jarira, then Afrasiab gave him his own daughter Farangis and a province, where he built Gang-dizh and Siyavushgird. Garsiwaz, Afrasiab's brother, envied him and slandered him until Afrasiab came out against him with an army. Siyavash would not fight his wife's father and was taken; Gurwi dragged him by the beard through the dust, and Siyavash prayed God to raise from his seed an offshoot who would avenge him. Gurwi set a golden basin on the ground, turned up the prince's face as if it were a sheep's, cut off his head and filled the basin with blood, and poured it out where he had been told; from that blood sprang a plant called "the Blood of Siyavash", and a dark storm arose that hid the sun and the moon. Afrasiab ordered Farangis beaten until she lost her child, but Piran saved her, and Kay Khosrow was born.

The idea his story turns on is that the innocent escapes the fire but not envy. He is tested twice: once in his father's palace, where his hands without perfume and the fire speak for him, and once in his father-in-law's palace, where nothing speaks for him. Both times his loyalty is what condemns him: he will not betray his father with his father's wife, then he will not break his oath to his father's enemy, then he will not fight his wife's father. What remains of him is a plant from his blood and an unborn son who carries his vengeance, and his death begins the great war of Iran and Turan.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the Persian essay does not read it. His Avestan name is Siiāuuaršan, compounded of syāva, black, and aršan, the male of horses and cattle, "he who has black stallions". The first part is Arabic sawād, blackness: s and w are the Avestan s and w, and the Arabic d does not appear. The second part is Arabic ʿirs and ʿarūs: the opening a is the place of a dropped ʿ, as ʿ drops in the Juthoor table; r is r; and the Avestan š after r was s in origin, as Greek keeps it in arsēn, male. Lane gives ʿirs as a man's wife and a woman's husband, also said of the lion's mate; ʿarūs is the man or the woman in the days of their wedding; and ʿarisa bihi is to cleave to someone. That is Siyavash's story: he rides into the fire on his black horse, becomes the bridegroom of Jarira and then of Farangis, and Sudaba clings to him.

Linguistic Root

Forms of the name

Bartholomae gives syāva- as an adjective, black, compares Sanskrit śyāva-, dark brown, and Persian siyāh, and makes the name a compound meaning "who owns black stallions", listing beside it another name of the same kind, Syāvaspi, "who owns black mares". He gives aršan- as male, man, comparing Greek ἄρσην. Skjærvø in the Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that Siyavash is the third Kavi whose name contains aršan.

Blackness

Lane: sawād is blackness, the contrary of whiteness, a well-known colour; one says "he met him in the blackness of night". The reading meets the whole sense and the letters s and w. The Arabic d stands outside the Avestan word, and the y of syāva has no Arabic counterpart, so the first part meets Arabic in two letters of three.

ʿIrs and ʿarūs

Lane: ʿirs is a man's wife and a woman's husband; the dual ʿirsān is said of a male and a female; it is said of the lion's mate; the plural is aʿrās. ʿArūs is the man and the woman during their wedding; aʿrasa is to make a wedding feast or to go in to one's wife; ʿarisa bihi is to keep close to someone, cleave to him. In the Juthoor table an initial ʿ drops in about eighty-eight per cent of pairs, leaving a vowel. The reading thus takes aršan as a dropped ʿ, then r, then s, the n being a suffix. The two words part in that ʿirs is the mate of either sex, while aršan is the male alone: where Avestan says stallion, Arabic says spouse.

Key Mythic Narratives

Siyavash in the Avesta and the Pahlavi books

The Avesta does not tell his story; Yasht 13.132 names him among the Kavis whose fravashis are worshipped, and Haoma asks that he may bind Fraŋrasyan and drag him to King Haosravah to be killed in vengeance for his father Siyavash. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says the outline of the Sudaba story is already in the Bundahishn: Siyavash went to Turkestan to fight Afrasiab, did not return to Iran because of Sudaba's conduct, married a daughter of Afrasiab who bore Kay Khosrow, and was killed in Turan. The Pahlavi books make him the builder of the castle of Kang-dez.

The vengeance

When the news reached Iran, Rostam went into Kay Kavus's palace, dragged Sudaba out by the hair and killed her, then led the army into Turan and ruled it seven years. Later Giv brought Kay Khosrow out of Turan, and when he became king he led the great war until Afrasiab was taken and killed. Haoma returns in the Shahnameh as the hermit Hum who binds him, and Kay Khosrow tells Afrasiab before killing him: you killed my father when I was not yet born.

Khwarazm

Warner notes that Biruni reports the people of Khwarazm dating the coming of Siyavash to their land ninety-two years after its settlement, with their kings of his line, and that the Shahnameh's Gang-dizh may be the old fortress of Khwarazm.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Persian myths reads the war of Iran and Turan as a civil war of one people divided, and reads Sohrab, son of a Turanian mother and an Iranian father, as the figure of one who stands between two cultures and is accepted by neither. Siyavash is another figure of that place: his mother is from Turan, he is an Iranian prince, he marries two daughters of Turan and is killed there, and from his loins comes the king who joins the two bloods, Kay Khosrow, grandson both of Kay Kavus and of Afrasiab.

Yarshater, as the Encyclopaedia Iranica article on Afrasiab reports, finds in Siyavash many features of a vegetation deity, and sees his killing by Afrasiab, who withholds rain and drains rivers, as an image of the death of plant life. The plant that springs from his blood puts him among the dying and rising figures: he does not return, but the plant returns from his blood and the son from his seed.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The closest story to Sudaba's charge is Joseph's. In Genesis Potiphar's wife seizes Joseph's garment, he leaves it in her hand and flees, and she makes the garment her evidence that he sought her. In the Qur'an the shirt decides the case: "if his shirt is torn from behind, then she has lied and he is of the truthful". In the Shahnameh the king decides by scent: the smell of wine and musk is on Sudaba and none of it on Siyavash's hands. In all three stories innocence is shown by something on the body or the garment.

In Greece Phaedra, wife of Theseus, loves her stepson Hippolytus; he refuses her, and she rends her garments and accuses him, Theseus curses his son, his horses drag him to death, and Phaedra hangs herself. In the Shahnameh Sudaba is sentenced to hang and Siyavash begs her life, and later Siyavash himself is dragged by the beard in Turan.

Among the Norse the beloved and innocent Baldr is killed through Loki's trick, and a brother, Váli, is born to avenge him when only one night old, as Siyavash prays for an avenger from his seed and Kay Khosrow is born after his death. A flower grows from the blood of Adonis as a plant grows from the blood of Siyavash.