The structure of Iranian national epic based on George Dumézil’s theory

There are two common approaches in the research of Shahnameh. The first group of studies scrutinize one unique story of Shahnameh, while the other one emphasizes on the coherence of all the stories. In this research the Iranian national epic is interpreted using structuralism. It suggests that Iranian national epic is not a set of scattered stories, but basically it has an Indio-European style. To that end, present study embeds on two theoretical foundations: first, according to George Dumézil’s theory, Indo-European universe has a class system. Secondly, according to Bahman Sarkarati, Iranian national epic is classified into three eras based on limited age of the universe and a confrontation between the celestial and the evil powers. In the first era, celestial order became a class system with the rise of Hooshang, Tahmoores, and Jamshid dynasties; respectively, which agrees with George Dumézil’s theory of three functional groups. In the second era, an evil period is manifested through the destruction of the class system.