n of Leis (870),
the first prince of Persian blood who declared himself independent of
the Khalifs, procured fragments of Danishver's epic, and had it
rearranged and continued. Then followed the dynasty of the Samanians,
who claimed descent from the Sassanian kings. They, as well as the
later dynasty of the Gaznevides, pursued the same popular policy. They
were strong because they rested on the support of a national Persian
spirit. The national epic poet of the Samanians was Dakiki, by birth a
Zoroastrian. Firdusi possessed fragments of his work, and has given a
specimen of it in the story of Gushtasp. The final accomplishment,
however, of an idea, first cherished by Nushirvan, was reserved for
Mahmud the Great, the second king of the Gaznevide dynasty. By his
command collections of old books were made all over the empire. Men
who knew ancient poems were summoned to the court. One of them was
Ader Berzin, who had spent his whole life in collecting popular
accounts of the ancient kings of Persia. Another was Serv Azad, from
Merv, who claimed descent from Neriman, and knew all the tales
concerning Sam, Zal, and Rustem, which had been preserved in his
family. It was from these materials that Firdusi composed his great
epic, the Shahnameh. He himself declares, in many passages of his
poem, that he always followed tradition. 'Traditions,' he says, 'have
been given by me; nothing of what is worth knowing has been forgotten.
All that I shall say, others have said before me: they plucked before
me the fruits in the garden of knowledge.' He speaks in detail of his
predecessors: he even indicates the sources from which he derives
different episodes, and it is his constant endeavour to convince his
readers that what he relates are not poetical inventions of his own.
Thus only can we account for the fact, first pointed out by Burnouf,
that many of the heroes in the Shahnameh still exhibit the traits,
sadly distorted, it is true, but still unmistakeable, of Vaidik
deities, which had passed through the Zoroastrian schism, the
Achaemenian reign, the Macedonian occupation, the Parthian wars, the
Sassanian revival, and the Mohammedan conquest, and of which the
Dihkans could still sing and tell, when Firdusi's poem impressed the
last stamp on the language of Zarathustra. Bopp had discovered
already, in his edition of Nalas (1832), that the Zend Viva_n_hvat was
the same as the Sanskrit Vivasvat; and Burnouf, in his 'Observations
sur la Gr