A Critical Study, Edition and Translation of The Qesse-ye Sanjan: The Account of the First Exile and Diaspora of the Zoroastrians of Iran

《Qesse-ye Sanjan：伊朗琐罗亚斯德教徒第一次流放和散居的记述》的批判性研究、编辑和翻译

• 批准号: AH/E00413X/1
• 负责人: Alan Williams
• 金额: $ 3.92万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FE00413X%2F1
• 关键词: Critical; Study; Edition; Translation; Qesse

The Zoroastrians of India, known as the Parsis because of their Persian origins, have one single document, the 16th century Qesse-ye Sanjan 'The Ballad of Sanjan', which tells the story, in Persian verse couplets, of their ancestors' journey from Iran to the west coast of India. According to this text this emigration of a small band of faithful Zoroastrians took place some time in the first centuries of the Islamic period and was undertaken because they were being oppressed and forcibly converted to Islam by the Muslim majority. The poem, of some 430 rhymed couplets, has never been satisfactoriy edited, translated and discussed in a full study. In the past century and a half many scholars, academic and amateur, have scrutinised it for light it might shed on the vexed question of when exactly the Zoroastrians arrived in India. Scholars still do not agree on the correct dating, some differing by as much as two centuries. This is hardly surprising considering that the text in its entirety contains only one date, namely that of its composition in 1599.In the study which will result from my research I approach the text for what it seems most clearly to be, i.e. a religious poem of a mythological, mnemonic and ideological character. It is a narrative which, so long as it could be enjoyed in the original Persian, was popular amongst Zoroastrians in recalling who they were, where they had come from originally, and how they had come to be who they were in Gujarat. With the ascendancy of English eclipsing Persian and latterly even Gujarati as their first language, the poem has all but passed into obscurity, except that it somehow continues to inform Parsi folk-lore and consequently their self-understanding. I have edited the text from the earliest extant manuscript and translated it afresh from the Persian into English blank verse iambic pentameter couplets (in order to preserve as far as possible, its form as a verse narrative). In addition I analyse the text, both at the micro and macro-levels of line and overall narrative structure and provide a full commentary on the text. The text must be situated within the long textual and theological tradition of Zoroastrianism, and also considered in the light of the 16th century concerns of the priest scholar author, Bahman Kaykobad. I conclude the study by discussing previous treatments of the text by scholars and reflecting on the significance of the text for Parsis themselves and for scholars in the study of Zoroastrianism in particular and the study of religion in general.

印度琐罗亚斯德教徒因其波斯血统而被称为帕西人，他们拥有一份文献，即 16 世纪的 Qesse-ye Sanjan“桑詹歌谣”，该文献以波斯语诗句对句讲述了他们的祖先从伊朗前往印度西海岸的旅程。根据这篇文章，一小群忠实的琐罗亚斯德教徒的移民发生在伊斯兰时期最初几个世纪的某个时候，之所以进行，是因为他们受到穆斯林多数的压迫和强迫皈依伊斯兰教。这首诗共有约 430 句押韵对句，但从未在全面的研究中得到令人满意的编辑、翻译和讨论。在过去的一个半世纪里，许多学者，无论是学术界的还是业余爱好者，都对它进行了仔细研究，以期它可能有助于解决琐罗亚斯德教到底何时到达印度这个棘手的问题。学者们对于正确的年代仍然没有达成一致，有些相差长达两个世纪。考虑到整个文本仅包含一个日期，即其创作于 1599 年，这并不奇怪。在我的研究将产生的研究中，我将探讨文本最清晰的一面，即一首具有神话、助记和意识形态特征的宗教诗。只要能用波斯语原版阅读，这种叙事就很受琐罗亚斯德教徒的欢迎，用来回忆他们是谁、他们最初来自哪里，以及他们如何在古吉拉特邦成为现在的样子。随着英语取代波斯语，甚至后来取代古吉拉特语成为他们的第一语言，这首诗几乎变得默默无闻，只是它以某种方式继续影响帕西人的民间传说，从而影响他们的自我理解。我对现存最早的手稿进行了编辑，并将其从波斯文重新翻译成英文空白诗句抑扬格五音步对联（为了尽可能保留其作为诗歌叙事的形式）。此外，我还从微观和宏观层面以及整体叙事结构对文本进行分析，并对文本提供完整的评论。该文本必须置于琐罗亚斯德教悠久的文本和神学传统中，并根据 16 世纪牧师学者作者巴赫曼·凯科巴德 (Bahman Kaykobad) 的关注点进行考虑。我通过讨论学者们之前对文本的处理并反思文本对帕西人本身以及对琐罗亚斯德教研究和一般宗教研究的学者的意义来结束本研究。