Alireza Esmaeilpour
Abstract
Drama has an ancient history in India. The Sanskrit dramatic literature developed in an organized traditional infrastructure and continued during centuries. The main origins of drama in India are the dialogue-like vedic chants, vedic rituals, and epic recitation. Related arts such as dance and music ...
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Drama has an ancient history in India. The Sanskrit dramatic literature developed in an organized traditional infrastructure and continued during centuries. The main origins of drama in India are the dialogue-like vedic chants, vedic rituals, and epic recitation. Related arts such as dance and music were important in appearance and development of drama in India. Moreover, Greek dramas may have had influences on Sanskrit dramatic literature. Studying the origins of drama in ancient culture of India reveals that it had some counterparts in ancient literature of Iran, which remained until Islamic period and parts of it became more widespread. On the contrary to these powerful origins in India, drama has not been able to develop in form of organized and indelible works of art in Iran. In this paper, firstly the origins of drama in India is discussed and afterwards, the void of drama in ancient literature of Iran is studied. It seems the main reason for such historical void is the fact that writing tradition has not been developed properly in ancient literature of Iran.
Alireza Esmaeilpour
Abstract
Having curly hair (Persian: gīsvari) is one of the obscure and rare concepts in the epics and heroic stories but various texts and particularly some of the non-Iranian sources pertaining to this issue could show us some evidenc regarding the ancient descriptions of warriors in Indo-european culture. ...
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Having curly hair (Persian: gīsvari) is one of the obscure and rare concepts in the epics and heroic stories but various texts and particularly some of the non-Iranian sources pertaining to this issue could show us some evidenc regarding the ancient descriptions of warriors in Indo-european culture. Moreover, obstinacy (Persian: sar-keshi), as one of the indispensable characters of heros, doesn’t mean “insurrection”, but it designates some kind of “independence” of two other functions, especially the first one, namely the “King-Priest”. It is possible to find the literal meanings of “Gīsvari” (having long locks or dishevelled hair) in some texts. The termGīsvari has occurred in the Iranian stories (either old texts or New Persian epics). It could be compered with its equivalents in some other cultures. This comparison would show us that symbolic signification of this term refers to the obstinacy of warriors distinguishing them from mercenary soldiers. According to the old beliefs, obstinacy of heroses appears in different forms: first, the incompatibility between warrior deities and other ones in the divine territory; and second, the heroses and kings’ discord in the epic literature. After the genesis of the priestly ethics of Zoroastrianism, Garshasb’s role retrogrades to a particular status and his obstinacy emerges as against religious laws.
