Abstract
E. Benveniste is the first to take up the problem of versification in Aßyatkari Zareran. He argues, JA. t. 220, pp.245-293, to the effect that the whole Memoir can be restored to its metrical form: six-syllabic verse, of which five, occasionally four or six, consititute a stanza marked fairly often either withassonance or with right rhyme.
The present writer, however, would draw attention to the fact that in ancientIran an octosyllabic verse was of the type specially favoured in epic literature.It may naturally be supposed that this type of verse should have maintained itspopularity throughout centuries down to the mediaeval times. Was it not exactlythe case with our Aßyatkar? It is throughout the whole text-not exceptingthe initial and the final sections-that text-critical as well as metrical investigationsare likely to reveal eight-syllabic verses, as mentioned above, frequentlycharacterized by either assonance or right rime. Cf. pp.3, 6, 9, 10 where thepresent writer demonstrates how to reconstruct such octosyllabic verses. Thewhole text thus established in its early Middle Persian metrical form, while itabounds in Parthian elements, shows no more than seven instances of the hexametre stanza.
