مجله متن شناسی ادب فارسی
سال پانزدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 58، تابستان 1402)

One of the most common motives for ancient magic and medicine was the belief in mysterious properties of the universe element. Believers of this knowledge would investigate the universe’s elements (from animal body parts to numbers and letters), their properties, and their effects on universe creatures and phenomena. They used their findings in various fields such as medicine, fortune-telling, dream interpretation, weather forecasting, Alchemy, magic, and talisman. These beliefs were also manifested in ordinary people’s life and ideology which is traceable in the context of their contemporary stories. The mysterious nature of some of the Persian stories can be also attributed to this knowledge. Adventures such as Simorgh and his magical and therapeutic actions, Rostam's battle with Div-e Sepid, Key Khosrow's magical actions, etc. are among the mythological stories in Shahnameh, in which the beliefs related to this knowledge have had a significant reflection. In the present study, we shed new light on the topic based on parallel texts, along with mythological and allegorical stories such as Nozhat Nameh Alaei, Ajayeb almakhluqat, Javaher Nameh Nezami and AlAbniyeh an Haqaqeyeq AlAdviyeh. These works contain information about the mysterious properties of elements. From this point of view, literary works written in two genres of magic and common medicine were analyzed in relation to four categories of animals, plants, stones/metals, and noises/voices. We also tried to show the roots of some of these magical, scientific, and folklore practices.

What is mentioned in the rhetorical writings about the term ‘Hyperbole’ is mainly limited to the customary and rational classification of exaggeration into Mobaleghe, Eghragh, and Gholov. These contents do not properly express the importance of this rhetorical term. The present descriptive-analytical study aims to investigate Maulavi's approaches to creating hyperbole in Masnavi by means of verbs, dimensions, and sizes (numbers). The results show that in terms of ‘Verbs’, figurative attribution is one of the most used means and artistic forms of creating hyperbole in Masnavi, especially because it is directly connected with contrast and contradiction and other literary aesthetic issues. In terms of ‘Size’ and ‘Number’, it is shown which numbers and sizes were effective in creating hyperbole in Masnavi. In terms of ‘dimensions’, what can be seen is that hyperboles are made in two ways in Masnavi: space hyperboles and time hyperboles. These types of hyperbole are the most used types in Masnavi with many examples in this book. Finally, another method of using hyperbole is to use plural signs, for example, the sign ‘Ha’ (in Persian grammar), and also the use of double plural-made words, in a non-normative way. Based on these explanations, it can be said that Maulana (604-672 AH) is very interested in making hyperbole. By using various types of hyperbole in his poems, he makes mystical thoughts and views effective and acceptable.

Rai Rayan Anand Ram Lahori (1107-1164 A.H.), known as ‘Mukhlis’, is one of India's great Hindu poets and writers. Apart from Diwan poems, his important writings in various fields of lexicography, biography writing, chronicle writing, memoir writing, and travelogue writing have been left by him. Mukhlis’ Diwan is a collection of his Persian poems and Rekhta, manuscripts of which are kept in Reza Library (Rampur, India), Moulana Azad Library (Aligarh, India), and British Museum Library (London), and the authors have corrected it and added notes on it. In his Diwan, there is the use of some Indian words that are less common in other people's poems, as well as the use of some Persian and Arabic words with a meaning other than what is common in Iranian Persian, and the reflection of some Indian customs. In the present study, an attempt has been made to investigate and report the reflection of such words and rituals in the Mukhlis’ poems and to answer the question of how much India and the Indian culture is reflected in the Persian poems of this Persian-speaking Indian Hindu poet. This research is applied in the direction of lexicography, cultural research, and lexicology in the Indian and Persian languages and literature.

Modality is a semantic and grammatical category for the demonstration of the realis and irrealis worlds. It is the expression of speakers’ beliefs and mental realities on the proposition and its content evaluation. Palmer divides modality into ‘propositional modality’ and ‘event modality’. The propositional modality includes two modes of ‘epistemic’ and ‘evidential’, and the event modality consists of ‘deontic’ and ‘dynamic’ modes. Every language uses various grammatical and semantic modal operators in transforming concepts. In the present study, we investigated the linguistic modal structures and markers as well as the meaning and context in the three stories of Shahnameh (i.e. Fereydun’s Monarchy, Battle of Rostam and Esfandiyar, and Yazdegerd’s Monarchy) based on Palmer’s theory. Different modes of modality include speculative, assurance, conditionals, all types of reports, necessity, commissive and threat, wishes and fears, presuppositions, interrogative and negative statements, implication and assertion in the structures like perceptual and cognitive verbs, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, allusion, and in the sentences expressing a general and acceptable concept such as idioms. Here, considering the setting is very important in conveying concepts of modality. The linguistic devices in these three stories are divided into three groups based on their frequencies: verbs (56%); nouns, adjectives, and adverbs (27%); and prepositions (17%).

In the 20th century, Lucien Goldman proposed one of the most effective theories in the field of sociological criticism, namely the theory of developmental constructionism. Among Goldman's central concepts to explain this theory are the two concepts of ‘meaningful structure’ and ‘worldview’. The meaningful structure shows the interrelationship of the components of a literary work and the worldview of a meaningful whole of norms and values. One of the works that the application of the theory of developmental constructionism is useful in its better understanding is Mehr va Mah poem, due to having a coherent structural pattern. This poem is one of the outstanding works of the 10th-century poet Jamali Dehlavi. In this regard, the present study seeks to answer the question of how the meaningful structure and worldview of Mehr va Mah is in line with the inclusive social platforms of the work. Examining this poem in the framework of the theory of developmental constructivism shows that the main social bases of the poet's era in the conceptual system, spatial elements, the systematic pattern of character relationships and the aesthetic field of the system are the creators of its meaningful structure. They have appeared as artistic creations - not a mirror reflection of social events. These elements in a dialectic relationship with each other show the worldview governing the work.

Adab al-Harb va al-Shaja’ah, the valuable work of Fakhr Modabber, is the oldest known Persian text on war etiquette. Considering the age of this work and its inclusion of unknown military words and terms, many of which have Indian roots, it is an undeniable necessity to review this book in terms of terminology and semantics. By studying the book with a lexicographical approach, it became clear that many of these words have not been explained in any sources; therefore, in the present study, some newfound military words are extracted, introduced, and analyzed. The first step in our exploration is to study Adab al-Harb and to extract unrecorded words in the field of the mentioned issues. In the next step, by a library study method and searching in various related sources, pieces of evidence if any, were collected. In the final step, some words were analyzed and their identities were revealed, and some due to the obviousness of their meanings or the lack of sufficient information, which includes more than fifty words, were just introduced. In general, all these words are new and none of them have been recorded in a dictionary. The words are introduced here for the first time.