Abstract
The stories of “wiles of women” are frequently found in Persian texts of all sorts; exegetical, narrative tales, and even didactic literature. Although prevalent and significant, they are still understudied in Persian literature, especially in texts of Indian origin. This research paper aims to look at two Persian texts from the 14th century CE, both translated from the same Sanskrit source, the Śukasaptati. The Ṭūṭi-nāma by Ḍīyā’ ud-Dīn Naḫšabī and the Ǧawāhir al-asmār by ʿImād Ibn-Muḥammad Ṯaġarī were both written in the style of embedded narratives to simultaneously entertain and educate.
In the production of these texts, each writer/translator has carefully chosen how to recount the frame narrative, and the stories and inner-tales to include and exclude, as well as pulling variants from parallel sources to add to his own version. Having the same frame narrative and stories in common, these two texts provide an excellent opportunity to see the amount of influence a writer of Persian literary tradition has when dealing with the same topic and the same story, and how big of a role the common perceptions and literary traditions of the time played.
To do so, we will focus on the frame narrative and inspect how differently a similar story can unfold and in what manner of words it can be retold. We will analyze the texts by comparing them to each other, to other prominent wiles of women stories, such as the One Thousand and One Nights, and by searching for the observance of patterns previously established by scholars researching the same literary topos.
The paper concludes that although different in their approach and choices, the writers still follow the same attitude towards women and their trickery, although to different extents. The underlying mechanisms behind the stories are then explained through textual analysis and it is shown how they operate on the same playing field but with different strategies to utilize the stories of the guiles used by women to warn men and prescribe what a good woman should be.
Discipline
Geographic Area
Sub Area
None