On the name of Garsivaz and Afrasyab in Farsi and Pahlavi

دانش و خرد حماسی

Article 6, Volume 1, Issue 1, May 2024, Pages 99-112   

Document Type: Original Article

DOI: 10.22067/jmels.2024.84616.1010

Abstract

About most of the propre names of Firdowsi’s Shahnama one can find numerous information in previous literature, especially in Namenbücher and entries of encyclopaedias. We know the origin of many of these names, but we do not always know, or previous scholars have not shown with precision, in what way and through which changes these names reached the Arabic and Persian texts, in our cases Shahnama. Garsīvaz and Afrās(i)yāb are among these names. Although their origin in the Avesta is known, it is not known why they occur in these forms in the Shahnama and/or some other Farsi, Pahlavi and Arabic texts. In this paper, the author tries to collect and analyze the different forms of these two names in Pahlavi, Farsi, and Arabic texts and investigate the causes of their phonetic changes to finally find out why the names Garsīvaz and Afrās(i)yāb reached the Shahnama in these to not totally natural forms.

Keywords

Shahnameh; Onomastics; Etymology; Garsīvaz; Afras(i)yāb

References