Persian legends and their Western counterparts (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Persian legends and their Western counterparts (2020)

tor.com

141 pointsdiodorus38 comments

>> While poring over Persian myths and legends for my upcoming novel, Girl, Serpent, Thorn, I was always delightfully surprised whenever I came across a story that sounded familiar to me from my western upbringing.

Here, the author of the article is advertising her book. I see this very often- I'm reading an article on an online publication and the author suddendly and more or less surreptitiously inserts a reference to the latest book they have published and that is currently being sold.

I confess I find this a bit annoying, especially when the subject of the book is unrelated to the subject of the article. I understand that authors must take every opportunity to promote their work, exactly in the same way as everyone else [1].

What I wonder is, is this something that authors are asked to do by agents or publishers? Or is it something an author decides upon him or herself? Is it more common for an author to advertise their recently published books in an article they write, or is it more common not to?

_______________________

Here's my latest published paper:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10994-020-05945-w

This is published on tor.com. Tor is a publisher of SF/F books. The author wrote an SF/F book for Flatiron Books, a publisher with the same parent company, Macmillan. So clearly this article is part of her book's marketing.

So you believe she was asked to do it by her publisher? I agree it's likely. I also wonder whether this is a common thing that is done in the publishing industry.

> So you believe she was asked to do it by her publisher?

Yes, almost certainly. It seems like a smart way to get the author and her book in front of more eyes, and it seems to have worked, since we're talking about it here!

Smart, aware of how the market works, self promoter author would do it naturally - otherwise publisher would ask them to do it.

Yeah it's a big reason articles are written, as others have mentioned. I give some leeway for people shilling their own creative work

I don't see this any different to engineering incident blog posts that are legitimately interesting, but insert "by the way, we are hiring!" somewhere in there - and it's always unrelated to the blog subject. Authors have to eat, and companies have to hire, I guess. I think it's in the authors self-interest to promote their own books - they don't have to be asked to do it.

almost any guest you see on any show is doing publiciity either for their new album, new book, or show/movie (even if they dont explicitly mention it)

theres a reason we only ever see kanye west every few years when he as an album coming out.

My point is that this isnt just the book industry.

The creator of Prince of Persia, Jordan Mechner, has recently adapted the ancient Persian tale, Samak the Ayyar.

Samak, a rogue with the skills of a ninja and the ideals of a knight, leads his band of ayyars in a thrilling adventure of secret missions, battlefield heroics, love and intrigue. A masterpiece of Persia’s thousand-year-old oral storytelling tradition, Samak the Ayyar is a vivid glimpse into the enchanting world that inspired Prince of Persia.

http://jordanmechner.com/samak/

I recently read and enjoyed "Haft Peykar" by the poet Nizami. Although I guess that much of its original beauty is lost in translation, some the language and imagery remain striking nonetheless.

One of the stories-within-the-story is the original source of Puccini's "Turandot".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizami_Ganjavi#Haft_Peykar

If the idea of common motifs through different cultures and mythologies interests you I highly recommend this 6 part interview with Joseph Campbell, who was the author of “The Hero with 1000 Faces” and an expert in the field.

Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers.

While Joseph Campbell (who was not an actual “expert in the field” for most of what he wrote about) has a big reputation among the public because he wrote books directed towards a popular audience, and e.g. George Lucas's praise of his work for Star Wars guaranteed him renown, he is not taken very seriously by actual specialists on folklore and anthropology. IMO, citing him does more harm than good.

What authors or works would you recommend instead?

The difficulty with folklore is that it’s so intensely regional and period-specific, and that no real “canon” exists for most regions and times, especially when you’re reaching back into pre-christianity folklore.

This is the mistake that Campbell made. He thought you could unify folklore with some psychological frameworks. But you can’t, unless you’re employing gratuitous selection bias, which he did.

So it depends what you’re interested in! I’ve personally found it most fun to find some culture I’m incidentally connected to, with a long literary history, and try to find the earliest transcriptions and translations of stories that I can.

If you’re interested in some region and time in particular, somebody here can probably help get you started.

I second this statement.

Russian Folk Belief by Ivanits is a good one.

My understanding from my readings in the field of mythology is that the parent post is precisely correct: Campbell was an enthusiastic amateur who did a whole bunch of cherry-picking to suit his passionate holding-forth on the topics, but without systematic study.

If he was alive today, he (still) wouldn't be a PhD, but he'd have a YT channel, a vigorously active twitter page, and maybe have penned a couple of D&D modules.

> Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers

https://archive.org/details/josephcampbellandthepowerofmyth0...

As some of the comments in the article point out, some of the commonalities may because the legends may be referencing older Indo-European legends which both European and Persian cultures have in common.

In addition, especially after 300 BC, with the conquests of Alexander the Great, Greek culture spread throughout much of the region. The Parthians were actually very much fans of Greek culture.

The book "Shahname", translated to "The Book of Kings" which is referenced in the article is not the first occurrence of these legends and mythologies. They are a collection made of much older folklore stories. While you can find Iranian girls nowadays named "Helia" or "Atena" which came from greek (a testament to Greek influence) but these legends date back to before the Greek invasion. But yes, as you mentioned, they run deep in Indo-European cultures.

And in cultures that were adjacent to them. Check out the "Nart sagas", oral sagas recorded by the northwest Caucasian language speakers who were neighbours of the Yamnaya/proto-Indo-Europeans. Their sagas have lots of elements with huge overlap with classic Indo-European stories.

It’s not surprising that the tales are similar. It’s not like Persia was disconnected from the Greeks, Egyptians or even the Romans.

I imagine a good tale went in all directions. The epic of Gilgamesh been an obvious candidate.

Comparative mythology is a field of study. Is is well known there are common Indo-European roots for many myths that are similar across a number of cultures and religions, including Norse one.

see, for instance: Etude de mythologie comparee indo-europenne from Georges Dumezil

TIL. It’s an interesting subject, for sure, given we incorrectly generally consider ancient peoples isolated.

It’s obviously untrue given Alexander The Great and the peoples who traversed the Mediterranean, like the Phoenicians.

As for Northern Europe, I understand that a Buddha was dug up in a Swedish Viking era burial site.

My point been, some people travelled far for trading reasons.

> a Buddha was dug up in a Swedish Viking era burial site

Fascinating, it's the first time I've heard of this.

The Helgo Treasure: A Viking Age Buddha - http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viki...

> A remarkable collection of religious items sourced from diverse lands was discovered during archaeological excavations on the Swedish island of Helgo.

> Discovered close together, these artefacts included a Buddha from the Indian sub-continent, an elaborate crozier-head from Ireland and a bronze ladle from North-Africa.

> ..[T]he most extraordinary find..was a small, bronze Buddha. This devotional figure dates from circa the 6th century AD and was probably made in Kashmir, on the Pakistan/India border.

> The Buddha has a silver urna on his forehead, symbolizing the third eye, while the ears have long lobes, the insignia of royalty. He sits in a meditative pose upon a double lotus throne, the latter representing purity. The Buddha probably arrived in Helgo via Swedish merchants whose eastern trade routes were concentrated along Russian rivers such as the Volga.

Indeed. There are a lot of myths of Greek/Roman gods that are similar to ones about Hindu gods that may be due to a shared Indo/European ancestral culture.

Not Persian mythos (which is an endless fountain of joy), but I recently stumbled upon an Ur-source of Ancient Greek transmission to Modern Europe: Ibn Tufail's Improvement of Human Reason. From the first page one can feel its resonance and shocking modernity. From Galileo through Newton and von Humboldt down to the modern philosophical novels of Sartre and Camus ;)

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16831

Does anyone have a recommendation for English translated collections of Persian folklore and mythology?

The Shahnameh is a good start. IIRC there's a high quality bilingual (English and Persian) version of it, with drawings and all. If you prefer it in podcast version, Mazandercast [1] spends a few minutes of each episode to narrate it. The rest of the episode is spent explaining traditions, festivities, etc. A good podcast if you're interested in overall Persian culture and history.

Of course another good book is "One Thousand and One Nights".

[1] https://open.spotify.com/show/4wOrW7rq5g4HZpSbi3nvwl?si=Ft_t...

Thank you! What got me interested in the first place was seeing some pages of the Shahnameh on display at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto: https://agakhanmuseum.org/collection/artifact/isfandiyar-kil...

> The story of a father killing his son is found in other tales in the west, perhaps most famously in Arthurian legend.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible_and_His_Son_...

and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Manlius_Imperiosus_Torqu...

P.S.

> the Celtic story of Tristan and Isolde ... where the young man goes off and marries someone else for a while before returning to his true love.

Now that I see it summarized, I'm surprised the British tabloids did not latch on to it ... probably too obscure a source, lacking a movie to drive it.

Like, for example, an entire opera by Wagner…

And it's probably emotional/biological.. even star wars had a son/father struggle. Who coined the metaphorical 'killing father' concept ?

Oedipus is an early one. What, 350-400BCE? Somewhere around there? [spoilers?] Oedipus is prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother, so runs off trying to avoid this horrible fate, but makes the rookie mistake of killing some rando old enough to be his dad (surprise! He was!) and then marrying a lady old enough to be his mom (surprise! She was!)

Though that's more of a literal "killing father" than a metaphorical one, I guess.

Then of course there's the story of how the core Greek pantheon comes to be, which features patricide very prominently and probably dates, in something resembling the form we know it, to ~800BCE, and possibly much older in cultures that influenced the Greeks.

[EDIT] I can't recall anything like that in the ~1800-2000BCE Gilgamesh, but there may be something. I remember that one having a lot more mommy issues than daddy issues.

Well each culture has its own quirks which changes how often you see a particular story. Greek culture held that the Gods saw "blood crime" as the worst thing imaginable, so you get a lot of mythic story arcs around it. For later Western European cultures, killing your kin just means you're taking initiative.

> killing your kin just means you're taking initiative

Well, that's a lot less true once you get outside the upper classes where succession based on descent was a way to wealth and power.

It's funny how I didn't appreciate the depth of oedipus. Younger I read it like a thriller.. with a big plot twist. Not as an existential metaphor about inner desires, love bonds and family ties.

Rostam and Sohrab.... tragic

fun art https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e4/f4/08/e4f40806a8afb57fd661...

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