On the Vindictive Guide A Transtextual Approach to an Epic Motif

Introduction Some narratologists like Kristeva and Genette believe that if a text remembers another text, a dialogue has taken place between them and an inter-textual (or trans-textual) relationship has thus been established. Some also believe that there is always a relationship between texts. Among them, Genette accompanied his claims by a theory and opened a new way before the narratologists, i.e., categorizing the types of relationships among texts and looking for the impact and inspiration of one text on the creation of another/s. Some other narratologists such as Propp (1368) and especially Todorov (1379) suggest a specific method for analysing narratives. In this method, a narrative will be divided into its smallest components (proposition) in order for the analysis to proceed more logically and more scientifically.
Method In this research, an ancient motif, which in addition to the Shahnama, appears in some historical, mystical and fictional – allegorical texts will be studied and analysed. The research method is a combination of Genette’s theory (intertextuality or transtextuality) and Todorov’s method; the motif will be divided into its components. After analysing those components of motif and their changes and evolutions, the type of relationship among narratives will be explained. And finally the author tries to find out the reason of appearance of this motif in these texts and of dialogue among them. As far as the author knows, this combined method has not been applied in analysing the Shahnama and its motives.
Results and Discussion The motif in mind in this article is a person (often an old sage man) through deceit, infiltrates the enemy’s camp, and tries to mislead and defeat them. The first side of this motif is not able to confront the enemy face to face, thus the only alternative for them is deception. We may find this motif in various texts: 1) Shaghad and Rostam 2) Esfandyar and Gorgsar 3) Sohrab and Hojir in Shahnama
4) Daryush and Zopyrus in the conquest of Babylon in the History of Herodotus
5) Firuz and Khoshnavaz 6) Amr bin Oday, Qasir and overcoming Zeba in Tarikh-e Bal’ami
7) Mahmoud of Ghazna when returning from Sumanat
8) Shamar’eish, the king of China and his vizier in Mojmal al-Tavarikh
9) The king of Jews who was killing Christians and his vizier in Rumi’s Mathnavi
10) The chapter of ‘Owls and Crows’ in Kalila and Demneh
11) Teymur and Toqtamesh Khan in Habib al-Siyar
After determining the hypotext and the hypertext in the intertextuality approach, the changes in the motif can be examined. If we want to determine the hypotext and hypertext by the date in which each work was written, Herodotus's account of the conquest of Babylon by Daryush would be the hypotext and the account of Habib al-Siyar on Teymur is the hypertext. It is not, however easy to recognize and determine the hypotext and the hypertext of a motif which has verbal roots and has been transmitted orally for generations. Here the issue is not “earlier written” but rather “sooner heard and read”. Hence, we should look for another criteria.
If we choose the transformation from simplicity toward complexity as our criteria – by using the logic that the human mind has evolved the same way throughout time, then based on the form, purpose and structure of the motif and the type of injuries that the devotee/traitor inflicts to himself to deceive the opponent, the narrative of ‘Rostam and Shaghad’ is the hypotext of the other narratives. Based on the form and the purpose of the motif and the type of injuries, the narrative of ‘King of Jews and his vizier’ is hypertext, and based on the structure, the narrative of ‘Amr bin Oday, Qasir and overcoming Zeba’ which is more complicated is hypertext. The Habib al-Siyar’s account on Teymur, although it is a historical work, is so ambiguous and complex that the criteria do not accept it.
In most cases in these narratives, the use of deceptive motif is accompanied with success except for in the narratives of ‘Esfandyar and Gorgsar’, ‘Teymur and Toqtamesh Kan’, ‘Mahmoud of Gazna’ and ‘Hojir and Sohrab’. The narrative of ‘King of Jews and Christians’ has a specific situation. Criticizing the religious dissidence and zeal, Rumi has a pluralistic view to the religions and believes that all of them will lead to the truth and to God. But it seems that such a narrative increases the dissidence among the followers of the religions.
The motif of the vindictive guide has been used in ancient texts and caused a dialogue between them. In the appearance of such a dialogue some factors are involved: first, the dominance of mythological insight/belief over the mind of ancient human caused by this is his preference to attribute different events to supernatural, mysterious and strange, abnormal and fictional causes, instead of analyzing the events scientifically. Second, the prevailing belief in ancient societies upon which anything was accepted to be real only if it corresponded to/with an archetype. Third, oral transmission of narratives allowed narrators to implement events with archetypes. Indeed, the oral transmission of motifs caused comfortable dialogue between the texts and facilitated the adaptation of each text. The fourth factor is the difference between the ancient historian and the modern historiographer in terms of point of view of mind and sight, etc. The ancient historians believed that the history is as important as fiction; these two could be gathered and combined with each other for one sole purpose, i.e., the teachings. All these factors could not only ensure but facilitate the dialogue between the texts.
Conclusion The results show that first, there is a kind of intertextual (or transtextual) dialogue between the Shahnama and these texts in the field of this motif, i.e., the vindictive guide. Second, in this particular motif, the Shahnama (specially the episode of Rostam and Shaghad) is the hypotext and the other texts are hypertexts. Third, some of the mental and social features among the ancient people have been brought into being or facilitated such obvious dialogues.
On the motif mentioned above, it is necessary to consider some points: first, the division of the motif into its smallest components (proposition) and then analysis of them (the propositions) show that the relationship between the texts has passed from ‘Intertextuality’ and reached to ‘Hypertextuality’ (adaptation). Second, the relationship among these texts is the expanded transformation of hypertextuality which means that from the perspective of components, the motif has developed from simplicity to complexity and sometimes has combined with another motif.
Although the Herodotus’s account is historically the oldest one, but according to smallest components (propositions), the episode of Shaghad shows much more signs of antiquity and ancientry; it seems that this is because some of Shahnama’s materials have orally been common and passed down from a longtime ago before their appearance in written form in 10th century. Accordingly, the Rumi’s narrative is the most developed one and the Habib al-Siyar’s account, although in its infrastructure has the same motif, but has evolved so much that it has less similarities with the other narratives.