A Plan for Organizing a Commentary Method on Masnavi

Mawlawi's Masnavi Manavi is the most important mystical poem of Persian language and literature. The chance of many audiences has led to writing commentaries of this poem after the death Mowlana, and has continued to this day. In writing commentary on Persian works, there is no specific method for explaining the points; therefore, there is no definite and uniform procedure in commentaries on Masnavi regarding how to explain the concepts and how to describe the complexities of the verses. Hence, it is not possible to evaluate the methodology and efficiency of commentators’ methods. Thus, it is necessary to design a model based on the most important constituents of Masnavi's formulation of verses in order to provide a commentary tailored to the needs of the audience as well as to evaluate the commentaries on Masnavi in terms of the method. This article attempted to design a model for writing commentaries on Masnavi by examining its verses through the statistical method of ‘classification sampling’ and to identify its formulating components. With the help of this model, on the one hand, one can write a methodological commentary tailored to the needs of the audience and, on the other hand, it is possible to evaluate the way the explanations are presented in commentaries on Masnavi.