Three Kalila-wa-Dimna Rewriters' Attitude towards Prosimetrum

This paper (second paper in the Panel PERSIAN PROSIMETRUM) focuses on the Anvar-i Suhaili, one of the most popular literary prose works in the late medieval Persianate world. Husain Va’iz Kashifi composed this work in the early sixteenth-century for the Timurid audience at Herat. It is a rewriting of Nasrollah Monshi’s twelfth-century Persian version of the Kalila wa Dimna tales, also in prose. Its language is a finely woven web of tropes, using all the technical possibilities offered by Persian stylistics, and particularly, in a very prominent way, the inclusion of verses within the prose narrative. This is already present in the earlier work, Nasrollah’s Kalila wa Dimna tales, itself a remarkable example of prosimetrum.
This paper examines the prosimetrical nuances and differences between Husain Va’iz Kashifi’s work and its model, as well as with a later version of the tales, based on the Anvar-i suhaili: the sixteenth-century Mughal ‘Iyar-i Danish. These three works have, to the best of my knowledge, never yet been scrutinised in depth for their literary style, nor has the impact of the style chosen by the rewriters been analysed for their relevance to the contents of the stories.
More precisely, the paper examines what the occurrence, structure, choice, language and placement of verse citations within the narration in each of these three works can tell us about their authors’ aims and target audiences’ preferences. It will also attempt to shed light on the rationale behind the “rewriting the Kalila wa Dimna fables” phenomenon in the medieval Persianate world, taking into account the whole gamut ranging from verbatim citations, to similarities and to pointed differences.