Basil Louri

St Petersburg
Russia

THE SLAVONIC APOCALYPSE THE TWELVE DREAMS OF SHAHAISHA:

An Iranian Syriac Reworking of a Second Temple Jewish Legend on Jambres1



.
Nikolai Klyuev, The Song about the
Great Mother (1930)2

1. Introduciton
The Slavonic eschatological and apocalyptic text The (Narration of the) Twelve Dreams of (the
King) Shahaisha was discovered for the scholarly audience3 by Alexander Nikolaevich Pypin (1857) and
was intensively investigated after the editio princeps by Alexander Nikolaevich Veselovsky (1879) up to
the 1920s. Thus, to this period, it became clear that this text goes backin some not precisely known
extent and in a completely unknown wayto Indian tales through some Iranian (Zoroastrian)
intermediary... but all the other details have been still disputable. The laterrather sparselystudies,
including my own one (1997), despite their occasional merits, contributed to muddle the waters even
more. Now, I would like to revisit the whole problem, discuss the available conceptions (including my
own former attitude which I do not support any longer), and propose a new interpretation of the text.
2. Recensions and Versions
This relatively short text is limited to the twelve disturbing dreams, which have been seen during
the unique night by some king named Shahaisha but, then, were explained to him by his wise servant
Mamer as, indeed, a revelation of forthcoming disasters but related to a remote future, and so, with no
potential harm to the present king. Beside this, only one thing is named: kings state (or city) is named
Iriin. These proper names are often distorted in late manuscripts but are established on the base of the
earliest manuscripts (which are, however, not earlier than the fourteenth century).
Two early recensions of the text are available, A and B. In the recension B, it is normally (not
always) the king whose name is Mamer, and it is the wise man whose name is Shahaisha. Already
Veselovsky has shown that this is an error. The Dreams are known in South Slavic and Old Russian
Slavonic manuscripts not earlier than the fourteenth century and in the Romanian versions of the early
sixteenth century (or somewhat earlier).
A review of the previous scholarship is desirable because the available reference books are not
sufficiently exhaustive4.
1

I dedicate this study to my dear Vladimir Aronovich Livshits, who made me know the world of Iranian
cultures as a necessary part of the Christian Orient. !
2
Translation: The Twelve Dreams of King Mamer / And The Cave of Solomon... / I read in the age of
fifteen / Precious stones of the scetes and (monastic) cells. Nikolai Klyuev (18841937) was a Russian Silver
Age poet from an Old Believer background.
3
Among the Russian Old Believers (those who left the official Church of Moscow in the late 17th century),
the Dreams have never ceased to be read and copied, as it is witnessed, among others, by the epigraph to the present
article.
4
Among the most complete are the following (all with unsatisfactory covering of the South Slavic data and
without Romanian data at all): -, , 1940, 86-95, with additions in: ,
1955, 167-170; , 1987. The history of the text of the Dreams is hardly understandable without taking into
account Romanian versions from the Slavonic. The words of Polikhronij Agapievich Syrku are still actual: ...
,
, , ,
... -

The Twelve Dreams of Shahaisha is a work discovered almost simultaneously in the Slavonic and
Romanian manuscript traditions: Alexander Pypin (1857)5 and Timotei Cipariu (1866)6 mentioned first
known manuscripts. In 1877, Fedor Ilyich Bulgakov put forward a guess that there exist two different
recensions of the work7. Finally, in 1879, Alexander Veselovsky, a great specialist in the history of
Christian legends, confirmed Bulgakovs guess and published the text of the older recension A according
to three Russian manuscripts8. Veselovsky considered the Dreams as a genuine Russian work, although
based on Asian traditions.
Judging from the Veselovskys publication, Moses Gaster supposedly identified this Slavonic
piece with the Romanian one mentioned by Cipariu9. He confirmed his supposition in 1900, after having
published the Romanian version according to another manuscript written in 178610. The English
translation added by Gaster to his 1900 publication remains the only one available until now11; it
corresponds to the earliest recension A (whereas the text mentioned by Cipariu belonged to the recension
B, as one can see from its title XII visa ale lui Mameru). Against Veselovsky, Gaster concludes, from
the very fact of the existence of a Rumanian version, that the Dreams are by origin not Russian but South
Slavic12.
Gaster in 1900 did not know that, already in 1889, a Czech Slavist Ji (or, as he used to
undersign his articles in Croatian, Gjuro) Polvka published in Zagreb the recension A according to a
South Slavic (Serbian) manuscript13, indicated as early as in 1882 by Grigorij Voskresensky14. This
manuscript was the first South Slavic one among the eight known today15. The second South Slavic
manuscript was published in 1891 by Polvka, too16. The latter Polvkas publication remained unknown
even to Alexander Rystenko, who prepared an edition of the recension B according to Russian
manuscripts and argued for the South Slavic origin of the recension A on purely theoretical ground17.
, ,
,
[to us, the Slavists, some very important parts of the Slavic history will never be clear without
knowledge of the history, literature, and language of the Romanians, as well as the history of the latters will be
always unclear without the history of the Slavs If the Russian historic and philological scholarship was so far
ignoring Romania, this is only because, in Russia, the Slavic studies and the study of European literatures were until
presently only at the embryonal stage, and the critical investigations in the Russian history were progressing
slowly] (, 1884, 246-247).
5
, 1857 (1858), 123-124.
6
Cipariu, 1866, 114 (the manuscript dated by the author to the seventeenth century has been lost after his
death in the late nineteenth century, but refound much later and dated to a period before 1636 by Alexandru Mare,
1974.
7
, 1877.
8
1879; repr. in: 1930, 515-561. The two Slavonic recensions A and B were
then distinguished in a more elaborated way by Alexander Rystenko in 1905 (s. note 17).
9
Gaster, 1883, 58-62.
10
Gaster 1900, 632-635 (text), 628-631 (English tr.); repr. in: Gaster, 1925, 226-238.
11
A late Serbian folklore recension, very short, is also translated into English under the title The Message
of King Sakis and the Legend of the Twelve Dreams He Had in One Night by Charles Simic, 2010, 5-6 (first publ.
1992). There is also a French translation of the recension A in Philonenko-Sayar, 1998, 282-287.
12
The old apocryphal Rumanian literature is based almost exclusively on South and Old Slavonic
originals... (Gaster 1900, 626). This is certainly true. For a larger context, see, e.g., Cartojan, 1974 (first publ.
1929-1938), esp. vol. I: Epoca influenei sud-slave.
13
Polvka, 1889.
14
, 1882, 27.
15
Six manuscripts are enumerated (with an edition of one of them) by , 1958. One more 16th-cent.
manuscript of Bulgarian origin is described by Anisava Miltenova: , 2004, 265-270, esp. 266. The eighth
manuscript which is the earliest one is dated to 1380 and described in , , 1987, 11. All these
manuscripts represent the recension Aat least, judging from the names of the two major characters (but the present
classification of the recensions of the Dreams must be reconsidered, because it was proposed by Rystenko in 1905
without taking into account the majority of South Slavic manuscripts and without Romanian manuscripts at all, s.
below). The language of these manuscripts has no trace of any East Slavic influence.
16
Polvka, 1891.
17
, 1905. For a detailed comparison of the two recensions, s. p. 71. Important criticisms of this
study were expressed in Potapov (s. note 18). Rystenko published as well one late manuscript of the recension A:
, 1908. The total number of Russian manuscripts of both recensions A and B is now unknown due to a
potential large number of the manuscripts written by the Old Believers; cf., e.g., a manuscript of 19 th cent. described
in , 1956, 473 (mention of two mss) and 483 (Nr 43, description of one ms of 19 th cent.). Rystenko took

Finally, P. O. Potapov published two more Serbian manuscripts, after having demonstrated that both of
them go back to Bulgarian protographs18. Potapov concluded that the Dreams became known in Serbia
from Bulgaria. However, he refuses to pronounce definitively in favour of either Bulgarian or Russian
origin, because he considered borrowing from Russia into the Old Bulgarian literature as a theoretically
acceptable solution.19 Now the latter supposition looks extremely improbable. There is no such fact
demonstrated. Therefore, Potapovs argumentation leads us to accept Bulgarian provenance of the
Dreams, or, at least, their recension A.
Most of the Russian scholars, especially after Rystenko, considered the second recension (B), still
unknown in the South Slavic manuscripts, as Russian. This is hardly probable, however, because it seems
to be survived in Romanian version, although the relevant Romanian manuscripts are unpublished20.
Indeed, the two manuscripts indicated in addition to those of Cipariu and Gaster by Nicolae Drganu in
1924 belonged, most probably, to the first recension21, but a detailed study by Mircea Anghelescu, after
having resulted into two more manuscripts, forced its author to acknowledge existence, in Romania, of
two independent translations of the Dreams corresponding to the two Slavonic recenisons22. I consider
this as a definitive argument for the South Slavic origin of the second recension, too. There is nothing
strange that its Slavonic text is known so far in Russian manuscripts only: this is a very common destiny
of the South Slavic texts due to rather poor preservation of the South Slavic manuscript heritage in
general. Potapovs conclusion that the Slavonic recension A goes back, through the survived Serbian
manuscripts, to a lost Old Bulgarian archetype, could be either tentatively generalized on the Slavonic
recension B or, alternatively, interpreted as an indirect argument for a Serbian origin of the later (and
corrupted) recension (B). Anyway, the recension B could not be taken as Russian or East Slavic23.
In sum, after having demonstrated South Slavic provenance of both recensions of the Dreams, we
have no longer ground under the supposition that the Dreams could have Russian origin24. This is a South
Slavic (Old Bulgarian) work datable to the period preceding the date of the earliest Serbian manuscript,
138025.
into account only one South Slavic manuscript (Polvkas publication of 1889 but not his another publication of
1891) and no Romanian manuscript. There is no, until now, an exhaustive study of the manuscript tradition, and so,
Rystenkos differentiation of the two recensions must be taken as very approximative.
18
Potapov, 1928 (for analysis of the two new manuscripts, s. p. 122-124). Moreover, Potapov stated (but
without providing argumentation) that the Serbian manuscript published by Polvka in 1891 goes back to a
Bulgarian protograph, too (ibid., p. 124, note 1). The manuscript Plovdiv 101(36) whose variant readings were given
by Potapov in footnotes, is edited in full by Angelov (, 1958).
19
Potapov 1928, 124.
20
S. on Ciparius manuscript above, note 6.
21
Drganu, 1922-1923 (1924), 246. At least, the titles of both manuscripts indicate Shahaisha as the king
and Mamer as his counsellor.
22
Anghelescu, 1975, 45-48. The manuscript Cluj 4390 found by Anghelescu has the title Cele 12 vise ale
lui Mamer, which corresponds to the second recension. Anghelescu does not consider the available list of the
Romanian manuscripts as exhaustive (ibid., p. 46).
23
And this is a decisive argument against the whole construction by Belkis Philonenko-Sayar (s. note 25).
24
This idea is still supported, somewhat anachronistically, by some scholars, e.g., Philonenko-Sayar, 1998,
288-289 (for the oldest rec. A) and 296 (for the rec. B); s. note 25 for Thomsons criticism of Philonenko-Sayar
concerning rec. B; as to the rec. A, she ignores both Potapovs conclusions and Anghelescus 1975 work on the
South Slavic and Romanian manuscript traditions, respectively. Against Russian and in favour of South Slavic
origin expressed their opinions such scholars as Rystenko (Serbia; s. note 17), Vasilij Mikhailovich Istrin (Dalmatia;
, 1897, 248-250; , 1906, 224), and Alexander Segeevich Orlov (, 1937, 194-198).
25
Francis J. Thomson pays no attention to Potapovs conclusions concerning the Old Bulgarian prototype
of the South Slavic recension A, and so, summarizes the results of previous scholarship incorrectly. Thus, he
reproduces uncritically Istrins view that the Dreams are ...an original Slav composition, which, from the linguistic
evidence, probably originated on the basis of oral legends in the region of Dalmatia in the 13-14th century
(Thomson, 1993/1999, 349-350, quoted p. 350). Cf. his 1999 formulation (ibid., Addenda, p. 45): There can be
little doubt but that it is an original Slav compilation based on oral legends of Oriental origin and the sole
controversial issue is whether it is of South Slav or East Slav origin. However, Thomson is here depending
exclusively on Russian scholarship (and even there ignores Potapovs datastill unknown to Istrin when he wrote
on the Dreams!on Bulgarian prototype(s) of Serbian manuscripts) and ignores completely the Romanian part of
the dossier. Thus, his main problem is the choice between South or East Slav priority, which is ...complicated by
the fact that the textual tradition of the South Slav version is earlier but the East Slav version has preserved a better
text (ibid.). It is clear, taking into account Bulgarian provenance of the recension A, together with the Romanian
dossier, that this is a pseudo-problem because both South and East Slavic manuscripts are temporally remote from

The main conclusion from our examination of the manuscript tradition is that the Dreams are an
early Bulgarian work of an unknown but early date. The work managed to pass a rather long route from
the time of translation into Bulgarian Slavonic to the Serbian manuscript of 1380. Russians or the East
Slavdom were not involved into its composition.
3. Oriental Roots
Taking for a moment aside the question on the immediate sources of the Dreams, literal or oral,
let us turn to a more accessible topic, namely, their remote predecessors in the Oriental literary traditions.
There is now a scholarly consensus that such sources did exist, as it was first demonstrated in
Veselovskys 187626 and 1879 studies. Normally these sources are defined as Indian (even Buddhist)
or Persian but, by accidence, even Hebrew27. However, no single work has been identified as a direct
source of the Dreams.
Veselovsky indicated two parallels of very special importance: the chapter of the Kalilah wa
Dimnah on the wise Bilar28 and a jtaka on the sixteen dreams of the Indian king of Kosala Pasenajit
(thus kings name in Sanskrit; Pasenadi in Pali). The latter was consulted by Veselovsky, helped by an
Indologist Ivan Pavlovich Minaev, still in a manuscript; it is a part of the Pali Buddhist canon, called
Mahsupina-Jtaka, Nr 77 in the standard English translation29. In both cases, some dreadful dreams of a
king are explained by his wise counsellor.
The first parallel is rather remote by contents (no textual overlapping at all, except the general
frame of the story) but provides a clear pattern of the way of diffusion of Indian Buddhist texts into
Christian literatures of both Christian East and West: SanskritMiddle Iranian (Pahlavi)Syriac
(Christian)Arabic (Christian and Muslim)... Starting with this observation by Veselovsky, Gaster even
arrived to a far-fetched conclusion that the Dreams are a detached part of the Kalilah wa Dimnah30.
The second parallel discovered by Veselovsky is more significant because it contains some
identical or similar dreams and their interpretations; moreover, unlike the text preserved within the
Kalilah wa Dimnah, the dreams of Pasenajit refer to an eschatological future, with no potential harm to
the todays king, in the same manner as the dreams of Shahaisha. In 1892, a Russian Buddhologist and
Indologist Sergei Fedorovich Oldenburg enlarged Veselovskys dossier with a ten-dream collection (in
three versions, Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese) attributed to king Kkin in Sanskrit but to the same Pasenajit
in two other versions.31 The most relevant to us dreams are here basically the same as in the sixteendream collection.

the lost original Bulgarian manuscript tradition. In the same addendum, Thomson rightfully rejects PhilonenkoSayars idea that the recension B is created on the base of oral traditions in the late fifteenth century Russia
independently from recension A, because ...both versions are clearly textually related (ibid.; cf. Philonenko-Sayar,
1998, 296).
26
Wesselowsky, 1876; repr. in: , 1930, 467-486.
27
Thus in one of the standard books on the history of the Serbian literature: , 1980, 232. One
can guess that this opinion has a pretext in Veselovskys observations concerning some affinity between the Dreams
and Slavonic apocrypha related to Solomon (, 1879, 20).
28
For a convenient comparison of different versions of the Kalilah wa Dimnah, s., still unavailable to
Veselovksy in the 1870s, Keith-Falconer, 1885, xxxi-xxxiii (introduction), 219-247 (tr.), 300-309 (notes). Both
Veselovsky and Keith-Falconer took into account the Tibetan (Buddhist) version of the story, which became known
outside the Kalilah wa Dimnah: Schiefner, 1875; for this part of the dossier in a broader perspective, s. Laufer, 1912
(1979).
29
Cowell, 1895, 187-194.
30
Gaster, 1900, 627, cf. 624, followed by Iorga, 1928, 38. Gaster argued that the name Mamer could be a
corruption of Bilar (the name of the wise man in the Kalilah wa Dimnah), with b and l transformed into m, either in
Syriac or in Greek (through a hypothetic form *; the actual Greek text has ); he refer to KeithFalconers comparative table of the proper names in different versions (Keith-Falconer, 1885, 303) to justify such a
liberty. In fact, this table shows stability of the name Bilar throughout the versions (Tibetan Bharata, Syriac (both
Old and New) Bylr, Arabic yld, bld, and bld, Greek , Old Spanish Beled and Heled, Hebrew Blr,
Latin translation from Hebrew by John of Capua Beled; Arabic yld evidently resulted from bld due to a confusion
of diacritics). Thus, Gasters hypothesis is too arbitrary.
31
, 1892; English tr.: DOldenburg, 1893, 509-516. Oldenburg was still working with
manuscripts only.

Thus, two of the twelve dreams of Shahaisha (Nrs 3 and 7, three kettles and a two-head horse,
respectively) turned out to have clearly established Buddhist precedents32. There were still no parallels
from Iranian sources but, however, already Veselovsky supported Minaevs guess that Shahaisha could
be a distorted form of Shahanshah33. Oldenburg, after having supported this identification, proposed,
albeit tentatively, identification of Iriin with Iran34.
It was Oldenburg who found out, after the death of Veselovsky ( 1906), an Iranian recension of
the Buddhist ten-dream series, the ten dreams of an Indian king Kaid short before Alexander the
Greats invasion into India35. The story is preserved by Ferdowsi as a part of the Shahnamehs chapter on
Alexander (verses 103-15736; Ferdowsi worked on the Shahnameh from 977 to 1010) but it has a different
source than the rest of the chapter. This source is marked by Ferdowsi with an introductory phrase (v.
103): Thus said a Pahlavi storyteller... () 37. This means that the source (presumably,
Zoroastrian) was in Middle Persian (Pahlavi). Among the ten dreams seen by king Kaid there were two
shared by the Dreams of Shahaisha with its Indian prototypes (two-mouth horse and three jars, Nrs 7 and
8, respectively). Unlike the dreams of Shahaisha, these visions are identical to their Indian prototypes and
follow each other immediately, but the dream about the two-mouth horse, Nr 7, has the same number in
the sequence of dreams as the corresponding dream of Shahaisha (about the two-headed horse). The name
of the wise man is here Mhrn (presumably, Mihran).
Of course, Oldenburg understood his discovery as a decisive argument in favour of identification
of Iriin as Iran.
Without knowing Oldenburgs paper, the ultimate Indian source of this story in the Shahnameh
was tentatively indicated by Grigory Bongard-Levin: Ext[ended] Mah[avamsa] (V.125-127) tells of
young Candraguptas dream and its interpretation by the Brhma Cakya. The substance of the dreams
in these two source is similar...38 Indeed, king Candragupta was a contemporary of Alexander the Great,
and so, not the worst candidature for a historical prototype of king Kaid.
It is interesting that, according to Jain traditions39, king Candragupta saw in one night, still as a
young man with apparently no chances to become a king, a series of sixteen dreams about the future,
including his own enthronisation after twelve years of famine; these dreams were explained to him by the
then head of the Jain community Bhadrabhu. The available written record of these traditions is
extremely late, 1838, but it could go back to traditions of an early epoch40, when the sixteen dreams of
Pasenajit were reattributed to Candragupta and transposed to the quasi-apocalyptic epoch marked by
appearance of Alexander the Great. These traditions are certainly of potential interest to the students of
32

Some details, nevertheless, differ, but the interpretation is basically the same. Namely, the three boiling
kettles seen by Shahaisha were filled by fat, oil, and water, whereas, in the Buddhist prototypes, two jars were filled
with water (thus in the tent-dream recensions, where it is the dream Nr 1; in the sixteen-dream one, dream Nr 8,
there was an imprecise number of vessels with water), whereas one jar remained void. In all these recensions,
however, the vision was a symbol of inequality and injustice. The two-head horse of Shahaishas dreams
corresponds to the two-mouth horse of Buddhist prototypes. In both cases, it is a symbol of two-directed corruption
in the courts and among the state officials, who take bribes from both rightful and guilty ones (dream Nr 2 in the
ten-dream collection, Nr 5 in the sixteen-dream collection).
33
, 1879, 22; Veselovsky refused to pronounce definitively about the identification of Iriin
with Iran.
34
, 1892, 140; DOldenburg, 1893, 515 (If in Shahash is hidden Shahnshh, we may,
perhaps, in Irin see Iran?).
35
, 1924.
36
According to the critical edition: , 1968, 12-15 (Arabic pagination). There is no literal
translation based on this edition; cf., however, Russian verse translation with V. G. Lukonins commentaries:
, 1984, 11-16 (and commentaries, p. 349-350). English verse translation and French literally translation
based on an outdated edition: Firdaus, 1912, 91-97; Firdousi, 1877, 88-97.
37
Cf. Voici ce quun conteur a rcit en pehlevi in Mohls French translation. The meaning of this
phrase as a mark of a new source was noticed by Evgenij Eduardovich Bertels: , 1948, 25.
38
Bongard-Levin, 1985, 107; originally in Russian: -, 1973, 318. The Mahavamsa (Great
Chronicle) is a Buddhist royal chronicle of Sri Lanka written in verses in Pali; its extended recension is known only
in Cambodia. By the way, Bongard-Levin proposed an etymology for the name Mihran in the Shahnameh from
Sanskrit brhmaa (brahman) through the Prakrit form of the latter mahana. It is difficult to see, however, how
mahana could acquire /r/ to result into mhrn.
39
For their acceptance in the modern Jainism, s. Nagrja (Acharya Shri Nagrajji), 2003, 308.
40
Cf. Thomas, 1877, 23-24. This work is the Rjvai-kathe, written in 1838 by a learned man Dvacandra
in prose in the Kannada language and summarising antique traditions of South India; s. Rice, 1921, 24, 93;
Ramaswami Ayyangar, Seshagiri Rao, 1922, 20.

the Shahnameh, but here I mentioned them only for demonstration that the temporal shift of the story on
kings dreams from the remote past of Pasenajit (sixth century B.C.) to the epoch of Alexander the Great
is to be attributed, most probably, not to the Pahlavi source of Ferdowsi but to its Indian predecessor(s).
After Oldenburg, the search for the Oriental roots of the Dreams of Shahaisha was interrupted up
to the middle of the 1970s, when it was reopened by a Soviet specialist in Tibetan studies Bronislav
Ivanovich Kuznetsov41. Kuznetsov identified Mamer with Mithras (without going too deeply into the
philological considerations), took uncritically Veselovskys conclusion about Russian origin of the
Dreams, and, what is the most important, inscribes his hypothetic history of the work into his original
understanding of relationships between Zoroastrianism and Mithraism. Thus, according to Kuznetsovs
own hypothesis, the Dreams ultimately go back to an ancient Iranian Mithraic work where elements of
two hypothetical Lives, that of Zarathustra and that of Mithras, were mixed together. No wonder, his
hypothesis was unanimously rejected by the critics42.
Finally, in 1997 were published the results of my own early attempt to resolve the riddle of
Dreams origin with inscribing them into the history of Iranian (Pahlavi) apocalyptic literature, somewhat
similarly to the Oracles of Hystaspes which are now known exclusively in Christian transmission.43
Starting with the fact (established by mile Benveniste) of affinity between the Oracles of Hystaspes and
a Persian apocalyptic dialogue Jmsp Nmag (Book of Jmspa)44, I elaborated on the points of
similarity between the two eschatological prophecies, the Jmsp Nmag and the dreams of Kaid. Indeed,
there were no dreams in the Jmsp Nmag, but, not so far from it, in the Oracles of Hystaspes, there
was, at least, one dream. More important, that, in the Jmsp Nmag, there was a positive character
named Mihr (although not Mihran), a good deity (Mihr means Love) which conquered a bad deity
Xm (or m Wrath)45. I concluded that, through some intermediaries, the name of the deity Mihr
replaced, slightly modified (Mihran means son of Mihr etc.), the original name of the wise counsellor
of the king, Jmspa, whereas the original name of the king, Vitspa (= Hystaspes), was changed, in an
unknown way, into Kaid. Then, I interpreted the Dreams of Shahaisha as a further metamorphosis of the
dialogue between Vitspa-Kaid and Jmspa-Mihran.
Now I still consider that an affinity between the story of the dreams of Kaid and the Jmsp
Nmag is worth to be explored, and the name Mihran of the wise man could have something to do rather
with the substrate of the Jmsp Nmag than with the title Brahman (pace Bongard-Levin). However,
our Slavonic Dreams are a more remote piece, and their overlapping with the dreams of Kaid has no
prototype in either Jmsp Nmag or other known texts of the Iranian apocalypticism. In other words, the
Slavonic Dreams share with the dreams of Kaid some Pahlavi substrate which, in turn, goes back to an
Indian substrate (ultimately, in Buddhist traditions but, with some probability, through a Jain
intermediary); however, there is no real ground for establishing any link between the Slavonic Dreams
and the Jmsp Nmag or other traditions related to Jmspa46.
It must be noticed that the parallels to the fifth dream of Shahaisha (a bitch with the puppies
barking within her belly, with an interpretation as the future anarchy between the generations) were
discovered by Veselovsky in both Ossetine Nart sagas and Old French Grail romances47. Thus, at least,
partially, the substrate of the Dreams was composed from the internationally widespread folktales, which
were accessible in different places of the world, and so, are almost useless in the search of the Sitz im
Leben. However, the Ossetians are an Iranian people, and so, their folklore motives were probably
widespread also in Iran.
41

, 1976; repr. posthumously in , 2003, 72-83. Cf. his dictionary entry on the Dreams
(, 1987).
42
The most detailed analysis is provided by Dan Shapira, 2001 (2002). Other criticisms s. in my earlier
article on the topic: , 1997; some criticisms from the viewpoint of a Slavist were added in 1999 by Thomson,
1993/1999, Addenda, 45.
43
, 1997.
44
Benveniste, 1932 (contains a reconstruction of the verse structure of the text).
45
After Benvenistes reconstruction, the Jmsp Nmag was republished twice in the critical editions of a
larger text within whom it is preserved as chapter 16, the Aytkr Jmspk (Memoir of Jmspa): Messina,
1939; Asha, 2013.
46
Dan Shapira proposed that the Slavonic name Mamer could be a distortion of some rendering of the
name Jmspa in the early (round) Glagolitic Slavonic writing, because the letters myslte and zhivot are very
similar in this script (s. Shapira, 2001 (2002), 315, for the details), but, of course, such a supposition has a sense
only under condition that the link between the Slavonic Dreams and the Pahlavi Jmspa-cycle is an established
fact.
47
, 1879, 44-45.

4. Translation from an Oriental Language?

At the very beginning of the studies of the Dreams, Veselovsky, although still allowing a usual
way of penetration of the Dreams to Rus (from the Orient through Byzantium and, then, South Slavs),
was arguing, albeit tentatively, for a direct transmission from the Orient to Russia. His main argument
here was preservation of sh in the name of Shahaisha48. Normally, // is rendered as /s/ in all translated
texts (not only Slavonic) that have passed though a Greek intermediary. Veselovsky did not know any
exception. Therefore, the subsequent discussion became mostly canalised into two flows: either finding
out of such exceptions (Slavic translations from a Greek intermediary where // would be preserved) or
arguing that the Dreams is an original Slavic composition with no written Vorlage at all. The third flow,
namely, an attempt to recover a written Vorlage of the Dreams in an Oriental language was represented
by the unique article of mine (on which s. below).
It is hardly imaginable that such scholars as Istrin (and, following him, many others, including
Adrianova-Perets and Thomson)49 would argue for originality of the Dreams would they have any idea of
their possible non-Slavic original. However, they considered (in an even more extent than Veselovsky
did) the existence of a Byzantine Vorlage unlikely and had no alternative idea of a written source. Thus,
the idea that the Dreams are an original Slavic creation appeared faute de mieux. Now we see better than
the Slavists of the first half of the twentieth century that the Dreams represent a genre of an apocalyptic
dialogue, quite common in some Oriental traditions but unknown on the original Slavic ground. It is
extremely unlikely that a Slavic author would create such a stylisation.
This is why, despite the argumentation of the partisans of the Slavic originality of the Dreams,
their opponents were not convicted. However, they argue for a Greek Vorlage of the Dreams, as did
Gaster already in the 1880s. Veselovsky disagreed with Gaster, insisting once more on the impossibility
for // to permeate through the Greek intermediary50. After Gaster, the main proponent of the idea of a
Greek Vorlage became Rystenko, who supported this claim with a series of examples of allegedly
preserved // in Slavic translations from Greek51. His collection has never been examined critically, and
so, it will be reviewed below in full.
Rystenko refers to Istrins examples where the /s/ in the suffixes of originals is rendered with
Slavic //52. In these cases, in Slavic transliterations, // appears as a distortion of the original word, but,
applied to the case of the Dreams of Shahaisha, this would mean that // of the original were lost in the
Greek version but reappeared in Slavonic. However, this is theoretically applicable to the last // in
Shahaisha but not to the initial one. Be this true, we have to expect a form like *Saxaia, with the initial
/s/. Moreover, Rystenko mentions a regular correspondence between // in Serbian and /s/ in other
languages53 (I think he means a feature of the Shtokavian dialects of Serbian). There is no other traces of
such feature in the manuscripts of the Dreams, and this is why, probably, Rystenko himself kept this
argument in a footnote only. Anyway, given that, as we know now, the Dreams first appeared in Bulgaria,
none of the features of the Serbian and Croatian translations could be responsible for // in Shahaisha.
Rystenkos next argument is an Old Russian word (ereiry), a hapax legomenon
from The Tale of Igors Campaign (plural form, name of some weapon). Following some Russian
scholars of the nineteenth century, Rystenko understands this word as a transliteration of Greek
() (Macedonian) long pike. Now neither etymology nor meaning of the word are considered as
established. Anyway, the most probable is Turkic (or, maybe, another Oriental) etymology54, and so, this
example is also irrelevant.
Rystenkos main authority is, however, academician Aleksej Ivanovich Sobolevsky. Sobolevsky
argued (against Ivan Evseevich Evseev) that the so-called Russian Slavonic translation of the Book of
Esther is translated from Greek (according to Evseev, this translation was made directly from a lost
48

, 1879, 47.
S. the references above, notes 4, 24, and 25.
50
1888, (in Russian).
51
, 1905, esp. p. 33.
52
Istrins observations deal with a translation from Latin (Letter of Prester John) made in Catholic
Dalmatia or Bosnia: , 1895, 12-17, 61-63. On this Slavonic text in general, s. a posthumous paper of the
Russian migr Byzantinist Alexander Alexandrovich Vasiliev ( 1953): Vasiliev, 1996.
53
, 1905, esp. p. 33, note 1, where he refers to the History of the Serbian language (in Russian)
by Maikov (1857).
54
, 1984.
49

Hebrew recension)55. Preservation of // in transliterations figured among Evseevs arguments against

Greek original of the Slavonic text. Sobolevsky answered with providing three other cases of the alleged
preservation of // through a Greek intermediary, one of them being the Dreams of Shahaisha.
One of Sobolevskys examples is the Narration on Dinara (about Tamar, Queen of Georgia),
which he considered to be a translation of a Greek panegyric. Sobolevskys ideas (somewhat fantastic)
concerning Dinara were refuted by Mikhail Nesterovich Speransky, who demonstrated that the Dinara is
an original Russian composition56.
Two other Sobolevskys examples are the Book of Esther in its Russian Slavonic version and
the so-called Eleutherius recension of the Narration of the 12 Fridays. Both texts are unknown in Greek.
Regardless of the original language of each of them, they appeared from contacts of Slavs with milieux
sharply different from the bulk of the Byzantine society. I have argued elsewhere that the Eleutherius
recension of the 12 Fridays was originally written in Syriac and, very likely (but not necessarily), was
translated into Slavonic (in Bulgaria) without Greek intermediary (however, // in a proper name could be
preserved even in the case of translation from Greek providing that the translator was aware of the
pronunciation of this name)57. As to the Esther, its translation reveals, at least, an unordinary for the
Slavic translators awareness of Semitic matters. Even if the original text of this Esther was Greek, it was
translated in a specific milieu of smitisants.
The latter two examples do not demonstrate that // in Slavonic transliterations from Greek must
be necessarily lost, but they do demonstrate that the preservation of // in some translations of the Oriental
texts through a Greek intermediary requires that the work of translator must be performed or, at least,
supervised by someone with a direct knowledge of the genuine Oriental context and able to look beyond
the horizon of the Greek Byzantine culture. These two alternatives are not very different, because both of
them require knowledge of the corresponding Oriental language(s) and culture(s), even if the translation
is performed from Greek.
Thus, // in transliterations within the texts of Slavonic translations, especially Bulgarian ones, is
a strong argument if not directly against the Greek language as the original language, but, at least, for a
direct access of the translator to the non-Greek Oriental background.
Turning back to the Dreams, we have to conclude that this Slavonic text is, at least, nonByzantine: its translator was able to manage with the Oriental phoneme //.
5. A Syriac Work Translated from Syriac
In my 1997 paper I was arguing that the Dreams is a Christian Syriac composition which, in turn,
goes back to a (probably, Christian, too) Pahlavi Vorlage. Now I consider my previous supposition of the
existence of a Pahlavi Vorlage as far-fetched. The Dreams were produced in Iran by somebody deeply
immersed into the Pahlavi apocalyptic traditions, but there is no ground to insist that he was writing in
Middle Persian. However, there is some ground to insist that he was writing in Syriac. Some features of
the Slavonic text could be equally probable in translations from Syriac into Greek and into Slavonic,
some others are not (and so, present arguments in favour of translation without a Greek intermediary).
Below, I will review four problems, whose only resolution, I think, is to accept that the Dreams were
written in Syriac and translated from Syriac directly (without a Greek intermediary) into Slavonic.
5.1. in the meaning religion
In the interpretation of the second dream, the word [Russian /sud/, Old Slavic sd] (whose
normal meaning is judgment, court etc.) is used in the meaning religion: ,
(the old sud will terminate, and the generations and the
tribes will avoid the divine office58. It is clear from the context, that it is religion that is meant, but the
55

, 1903, 436, note 1. The discussion about the original language of the Old Russian (that
is, available through Russian manuscripts) Slavonic version of the Book of Esther (representing an otherwise
unknown recension of the text) continues even now. For the status quaestionis, s. Kulik, 2008, 58-62; the author
opts for a Greek original, but, before him, Irina Lycn completely refreshed the argumentation in favour of
translation from Hebrew: , 2001.
56
, 1926, 48-49. However, the Russian author could have some access to Georgian chronicles.
57
Louri, 2012, 165-177.
58
, 1879, 6; (here and below the orthogarphy is simplified). The same reading () is
preserved, e.g., in the mss published by Polvka, 1889, 189; Potapov, 1928, 125 (both mss).

word sd has never meant religion in neither Slavonic59 nor Greek60. In some manuscripts, the word
is changed to (lit. law), to whom the meaning religion is normal61. It is clear, however, that
the lectio difficilior preserved in the best manuscripts is genuine.
This reading is explainable as a mistranslation of Syriac , whose normal meaning is, indeed,
judicium, but also jus and, then, religio vera62. Of course, such a mistranslation is equally possible in
Slavonic and Greek, and so, it says only about the language of the archetype but nothing about the
language of the original of the Slavonic translation.
5.2. (Shahaisha)
It is obvious that Slavonic name Shahaisha () is a rendering of the title Shahanshah or
Shahinshah63. The lost, in Slavonic, of two consonants, /n/ and the final /h/, needs to be explained.
Disappearance of /n/ can be explained on either Syriac or Slavonic ground. In Syriac, this title of
the Persian kings occur in different forms, namely hynh (), hnh (), and
hnh ()64. Both in Syriac and Cyrillic Slavonic writings the graphemes for /i/ and /n/ are very
similar to each other and could be easily confounded by the scribes (Cyrillic izhe was often hardly
distinguishable from nyn ). Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that /n/ was changed into /i/ by a scribal
error in either Syriac manuscript which was in the hands of the Slavonic translator or in the Slavonic
Cyrillic tradition at some its very early stage. The genuine form of the title used by the Syriac author was
Shahanshah, not Shahinshah. It resulted into Slavonic Shahaisha with two vowels in succession.
The Slavonic manuscripts preserve no traces of such theoretically expectable forms as
* or *. Disappearance in pronunciation of the final /h/ is specific to the Syriac
language, with its general trend to weakening of laryngeals. In the Eastern Syriac dialects (those of the
Iranian Empire), the final /h/ is always silent65. Thus, the lost of the final /h/ in Slavonic is explainable as
a result of a correct transcription (not transliteration) from Syriac. Such a change is not specific to either
Slavonic or Greek, and so, could appear in translation into each of both.
In sum, the name Shahaisha, beside preservation of //, provides two arguments in favour of
Syriac as the original language of the Dreams. However, both arguments are compatible with a possibility
of a Greek intermediary between Syriac and Slavonic.
Preservation of // is compatible with a Greek intermediary only under condition that the
translator from Greek into Slavonic was aware of Oriental realities. This condition is, of course, rather
difficult.
5.3. as ahr-e rn
Shahaisha is the king of some (lit. City of Iriin), with the word (city)
always before the proper name. The proper name itself is often corrupted in manuscripts66, but the best
manuscripts preserve it rather well. We know, after Veselovsky and especially Oldenburg, that Iriin
means Iran, but the exact nature of such a transformation remains unknown.
First of all, one has to observe that the name of Iran is used only within the phrase city of Iran,
which is the official name of the Iranian empire. Its genuine form rn-ahr became to alternate with its
59

Cf. SJS, IV, 401-403, s.v. .

Cf. meanings of and , s.vv., especially in Liddell, Scott, Jones, 1996, 995, 997; Glare, 1996,
186, and Lampe, 1961, 777-779.
61
Thus in Polvka, 1891, 158, and in the Romanian text of Gaster, 1900, 633 (lege).
62
TS, col. 843. Cf. also etymologically unrelated but apparently similar Pahalvi dn religion (MacKenzie,
1971, 26), which could influence the wording of the Syriac original.
63
V. A. Livshits informed me that both forms occur in Middle Persian and early New Persian. The name of
the king (or, in the recension B, of his wise man) in various manuscripts of the Dreams is often altered, but the form
is preserved in the best manuscripts and is easily recognisable in the others.
64
TS, col. 4003.
65
Maclean, 1895, 317, 108. There is no detailed study of the laryngeals in different dialects of Syriac but
many useful data are collected in Hoberman, 1988.
66
E.g., , 1879, 4 (two mss from the three used by the editor). Often hypercorrected into
Jericho (e.g., the third ms in , 1879, 4; both mss of Potapov, 1928, 124; Polvka, 1889, 188; Polvka,
1891, 157), which resulted, I think, into Romanian Vaihon in the ms of Gaster, 1900, 632 (the ending -ihon is the
same as in all Slavonic forms of the toponyme Jericho). Cf. also the variant readings in , 1905, 97-98, 124.
60

inversion ahr-e rn in the late Middle Persian and the early New Persian periods and gradually replaced
the previous form67. If the Syriac original of the Dreams is datable, as the earliest date, to the epoch of the
flourishing of the Syriac apocalypticism after the Arab conquest in the seventh century, the absence from
the Slavonic manuscripts of the phrase Iriin-city (equally admissible for the Slavic grammar) would
corroborate this dating.
However, the two /i/ in the middle of Iriin pose a problem. It is too different from the Middle
Persian and early New Persian rn in both pronunciation and writing (yln, where l is the common sign
for /l/ and /r/). In Syriac, it is hardly possible to find out a transliteration or a transcription of the Iranian
rn instead of the common toponyme Persia. The only example in the Thesaurus Syriacus, ( 13th
cent.), corresponds to modern Persian Iran68. All these forms contain the consonant group yr,
whereas the form Iriin would presuppose, instead, the group ry.
Looking for renderings of rn in Mediaeval Aramaic writing in other languages than Syriac, I
found in Sogdian (in the so-called Sogdiannot Syriac but still Aramaicscript in a Buddhist text) the
form ryn 69, which corresponds to Parthian ryn aryn, that is, to the exact equivalent of Middle
Persian rn. Parthian was the official language of the Iranian empire under the Arshakids (up to 226 AD)
but was still in some official usage under the Sassanids (e.g., in the trilingual royal inscription in Kabaye Zardot in Frs of Shapur I, 4th cent.). A transliteration of aryn is also preserved in Syriac, but not in
the meaning of Iranian/Iran70.
It is reasonable to see in Slavonic Iriin an unhelpful transcription of the consonant writing ryn
rn, originally intended to be read not in Parthian (as aryn) but in Middle Persian (rn). The
existence of such writing in Syriac is especially probably because of the corroborating evidence from the
part of Sogdian. However, it must look, in Syriac, as somewhat archaic and, certainly, of rare occurrence.
Its appearance in the original text of the Dreams, instead of the toponyme Persia which was ordinary in
Syriac, must be considered in connexion with Dreams Iranian substrate as a whole: this work was more
Iranian than other Syriac apocalyptic works.
The form Iriin resulted from an arbitrary vocalising of the available consonants and, therefore, is
a harsh distortion of either Middle Persian or Parthian pronunciation. This fact is important to us for being
able to exclude the hypothesis of an expertly-guided translation into Slavonic. The Slavonic translator had
no access to the realities of the Iranian empire, neither directly or indirectly. This conclusion, in turn,
prevents us from accepting the preservation of // in Shahaisha as a result of the same hypothetical
expertly-guided translation. Therefore, the only reasonable conclusion is that the Dreams were translated
directly from Syriac71.
5.4. < * putrid undigested food
One more difficulty of the Dreams could be resolved, I think, with retroversion into Syriac. The
second dream, according to the best manuscripts, presents a strange vision: some (lit.
humid belly) is pending from the heaven to the earth72. According to the interpretation, this means that
the old religion will be ceased (s. above, section 5.1), and, in particular, the people will be stingy and
refuse to give food to their poor relatives.
The content of the vision is often altered in manuscripts, but the process of increasing of
differences can be traced. Thus, in one South Slavic manuscript becomes (gray
towel)73, which sounds likely to the original reading. In another South Slavic manuscript appears
(crescent or sickle)74, clearly, derived from . However, the South Slavic original of the
only published Romanian manuscript elaborated on the idea of gray towel even further: here, the king

67

I am grateful for this information to V. A. Livshits. S., for some details, MacKenzie, 1998.
TS, col. 168; I am grateful to Nikolai Seleznyov for this reference.
69
Within the toponyme Eran-wej. Cf. Gharib, 1995, s.vv. rynwyjn and rynwyjn (Nrs 1525, 1526). The
name of Iran in Sogdian is Persia, the same as in Syriac.
70
TS, col. 379, s.v. : Arius, h. e. ex Aria regione Persarum, quae hodie Chorasana dicitur,
oriundus....
71
For a discussion of possible historical circumstances of direct translations from Syriac into Slavonic, s.
especially , 1996, cf. Vaillant, 1948.
72
, 1929, 6: .
73
Polvka, 1889, 189.
74
, 1958, 148 (omitted among the variant readings from this ms in Potapov, 1928).
68

...saw a woman holding in her hand a towel (mntergur)75 that reached from heaven to earth76; this
woman is a completely new character in the story. Other ways of avoiding the lectio difficilior are also
used77. One can say that the South Slavic manuscripts eliminated this reading, whereas in different ways,
but in the Russian manuscripts, from the earliest to the latest ones, it is rather stable.
The reading must be the closest one to the genuine reading but it, too, has no chance
to be present in the Bulgarian archetype of the Dreams. The word , although already contained in
the Proto-Slavic lexical fund, was inherited by the Eastern and Western Slavic languages only but is
absent from the South Slavic languages, including Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian), Bulgarian, and
Serbian78. However, there was, in Old Church Slavonic and other South Slavic languages, another word,
similar to (and, possibly, also etymologically related, but its etymology is not established with
certainty79): entrails or dung80 (= in Old Russian Church Slavonic81), which
acquired, in South Slavic languages, the meaning belly (cf. Bulgarian and Serbian ). As
to Old Russian , it is not known with meaning entrails in the written sources but preserves such
meaning in Russian dialects82.
Thus, it is reasonable to restore the genuine reading as instead of , with taking
into account the whole range of its meanings: entrails, dung, and belly. Such a reconstruction is
required by the history of the Slavic languages and does not appeal to Syriac in any extent. However, the
meaning of the place remains obscure, even if we are now able to imagine some entrails, which are
pending from the heaven to the earth. Now, we turn ourselves to Syriac in attempt to illuminate this
obscurity. The following reconstruction will not exclude a Greek intermediary, but I will skip its
theoretical discussion as becoming useless after the previous section.
The Syriac Bible in Mal 2:3 has undigested food, dung, excrement83. The meaning of
this word overlaps with that of Slavonic (also used in translation of Mal 2:3), but, unlike the
latter, the Syriac word has no meaning belly or even entrails. If the Dreams were translated from
Syriac, the Slavonic translator chose the word , whose range of meanings was much larger than
that of . Therefore, his translation lost in clarity.
Let us notice that the appearance of the undigested food would be at place in a vision dedicated to
those who retain the food with themselves instead of sharing it with their relatives.
The second word of the obscure phrase (now restored as * )
corroborates our conclusion. In Slavic languages, the adverb or has only the meanings of
humid, raw, and fresh84. Thus, the phrase or * was certainly obscure.
However, in Syriac, the corresponding word is , lit. humid, moist but metaphorically also
polluted, contaminated, tainted etc.85 The translator committed an error when having taken into account
only the literal meaning of and ignoring the metaphorical one.
With resorting to Syriac, we have obtained a perfect sense for the obscure phrase (<
*) : putrid undigested food.

75

This word presents some difficulty, because, as such, it is not available in the dictionaries (Dicionarul
limbii romne (DLR), 1965-1990; Mihil 1974; Bolocan, 1981; Costinescu, Georgescu, Zgraon, 1987). However, it
is clearly divisible into two parts, mn-tergur hand-towel, that is, towel for hands (cf. Russian ). I am
grateful to Alexander Borisovich Chernjak for a consultation concerning this Romanian lexeme.
76
Gaster, 1900, 629 (tr.), 633 (txt).
77
In the main (South Slavic) manuscript of Potapovs edition, a part of the top line, which corresponds
exactly to the difficult place is clipped (containing one word, according to Potapovs evaluation) (Potapov, 1928,
125); (horse) collar (Polvka, 1891, 158).
78
, 1976, 33-34, s.v. *bruxo/brux; Derksen, 2008, 63, s.v. *bxo; *bx. But there is, of
course, no corresponding entry in the Prague Slovnk jazyka staroslovnskho.
79
See [M. Vasmer], , s.v. ; Skok, 1973, 495, s.v. trbuh.
80
SJS, IV, 505, s.v., with a reference to the earliest (Cyrillo-Methodian) Slavonic translation of Malachi
2:3, where it renders of the Septuagint (lit. tripe, a section of stomach of ruminating animals), which, in
turn, corresponds to offal as ripped out in preparing victim and also fecal matter (Brown, Driver, Briggs,
1991, 831); cf. stercus as the Latin equivalent in the Vulgate.
81
, 1912, col. 993, s.v. , with the same example from Mal 2:3 but from a Russian
manuscript.
82
, 1968, 224, s.v. , for plural form entrails of an animal or a human.
83
Critical ed. by A. Gelston, in: The Peshita Institute Leiden, 1980, 96. Cf. TS, cols. 3311-3312, s.v.
84
SJS, IV, 372-373, s.v. , -; , 1912, col. 877, s.v. .
85
TS, cols. 4437-4438.

Finally, this reconstruction is corroborated additionally by the fact that the word (is
pending, hanging), which follows our difficult phrase, when retroversed into Syriac, , produces a
wordplay with : tall taly putrid pending. The second dream of Shahaisha was
probably looking not especially appetizing but, at least, the wording of its summary in the mouth of the
king became highly poetic.
5.5. Manuscript Tradition
Finally, some indirect but important argument in favour of translation from Syriac is provided
with the manuscript tradition. The oldest manuscript, that of the Savin monastery (1380), contains the
Dreams together with, at least, two other works which I consider to be direct translations into Slavonic
from Syriac, the so-called Eleutherius recension of the Twelve Fridays and the Slavonic Aiqar.
According to Miltenova, these works constituted a part of the apocryphal collection whose translation is
to be dated to the earliest period of the Bulgarian (Old Church Slavonic) literature86.
6. Mamer < Mmr Jambres
6.1. A Need of a Fresh Look
The name of Mamer is traditionally considered as one of the potential keys to the Sitz im Leben of
the Dreams. It is sometime altered in manuscripts but mostly preserved quite well and must be considered
as surely established. Nevertheless, the attempts of its understanding could not be called very successful.
Some of them were mentioned above87.
Veselovskys idea that Mamer is an avatar of the same wise man who became known in the
Western European legends (Latin and many vernacular) as Morolf or Marcolf (with others modifications
of the name)88 remains until now unverifiable and unfalcifiable, because the origin of Western Morolf is
still unclear89. However, King Solomon saw Marcolf for the first time a parte Orientis venientem90. I
consider the question as still open, but it is hardly possible that the personality of Mamer could be
elucidated with a not less unclear personality of Morolf.
Oldenburg proposed (but without linguistic argumentation) to identify Mamer with Mihran from
the Shahnameh91, but this hypothesis implies a much more close relation between the Dreams of
Shahaisha and the Pahlavi source of the dreams of Kaid than one can demonstrate.
There are, at least, three hypotheses where the name of Mamer is understood as a common name
and not as a proper name, in analogy with Shahaisha. The first of them is proposed by me but I do not
support it any longer92. The second one was published by Belkis Philonenko-Sayar but proposed by
Khamid Nigmatov93: ...il sagit sans doute du term mamur, employ du palais la cour des princes
musulmans. One can see that the term in question is , an Arabic loanword in Farsi and Turkish with
a wide range of meaning (envoy, officer, agent94). It is not, however, an appropriate term for a kings
counsellor, a man of wisdom. The third hypothesis is an alternative one by Dan Shapira (who also put
forward the hypothesis on Mamer = Jmspa mentioned above): the genuine form of the name is Amira
86

S. , 1987 and Louri 2012. I am currently preparing a study of the Slavonic

Aiqar as a direct translation from Syriac.
87
S. notes 30 (Gaster: Mamer = Bilar), 41-42 (Kuznetsov: Mamer = Mithras), 46 (Shapira: Mamer =
Jmspa).
88
Expressed by him at first in 1876 (Wesselowsky, 1876) and 1879 (, 1879) but then
elaborated in a series of articles (conveniently collected in the two issues of the vol. 8 of his Collected Works, 1921
and 1930: , 1921; , 1930).
89
Cf. Griese, 1999, and Ziolkowski, 2008.
90
Benary, 1914, 1 (this text is reprinted in Ziolkowski, 2008, 52).
91
, 1924.
92
, 1997: Mamer from mamer, substantivated active participle of the causative stem of the verb mr
(to settle, to colonise in Aphel), with the meaning of emigrant. This supposition, however, was not corroborated
with examples of the real Syriac usage, and so, is not persuasive.
93
Philonenko-Sayar, 1998, 290, where she refers to a personal communication of le professeur H.
Nijmatov de Boukhara. Nijmatov is here certainly an error for Nigmatov. I presume that it is Khamid
Gulomovich Nigmatov, a professor of the Uzbek language in the Tashkent University, who is meant.
94
E.g., Aryanpour.

(as it is in one late Russian manuscript), from Arabic amr, chief, commander95. However, this title
seems to be rather unfitting with the personality of Mamer, not to say that the reading Amer could hardly
be genuine.
To my knowledge, the above list of the attempts to identify or otherwise explain Mamer is
exhaustive. A need of some fresh look at the problem is obvious. Therefore, I would like to reopen the
search of Mamer. And I choose for guidance the following distinguishing marks: wanted is a person with
a reputation of a wise man known as such by the Christians in Iran, whose name is Mamer or, at least, as
close as possible to the consonant writing mmr.
The suitable person can be discovered almost immediately: Jambres, one of Pharaohs wise men
(who were anonymous in Ex 7:11-12 but named in Greek by Paul in 2 Tim 3:8), whose original Semitic
(Aramaic) name is , and whose Iranian dossier left some traces in Syriac. Let us check the relevant
evidences.
In Slavonic, we would have to expect the final aleph in the name rendered with the ending a, that is, * instead of , but the aleph is the most instable consonant which can drop off at
various stages of transmission, in either Syriac or Slavonic. For instance, in Slavonic, the ending -a in a
proper name sounds as feminine (although sometimes is preserved in masculine names), whereas a
consonant ending with - is obviously masculine, and so, the original ending could be changed into a
more masculine one. Therefore, there are certainly no linguistic reasons forbidding the identification of
Aramaic with Slavonic . Quite the contrary, the two names are strikingly similar. Let us see
whether their identification is to be established in the analysis of the corresponding legendary traditions.
6.2. Jambres and Mamer: the Literary Frame
First of all, let us consider the framing story: a king saw some terrifying dream(s), which is
interpreted by a wise man as a prophecy about the end of his kingdom. Of course, this is not a literary
frame of rare occurrence, as we have seen above and as we can recall from the biblical Book of Daniel.
However, our question is about the presence of such a story in the legendary dossier of a specific wise
man named Jambres. Indeed, such a story is present. It is preserved in the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Ex
1:15 in a fuller but slightly altered form and in Flavius Josephus in an abbreviated but more authentic
form.
The Targum runs as follows. Pharaohs order to the midwives of the Hebrews is explained by his
previous dream:
And Pharaoh said that while asleep he saw in his dream and lo!, the entire land of Egypt was placed on the
scale of a balance and a lamb, the young of a ewe, on the other scale; and the scale of the balance with the
lamb overweighed the other. Immediately he sent and called all the sorcerers of Egypt and narrated his
dream to them. Immediately Jannes and Jambres ( ) the head magicians opened their mouths and
said to Pharaoh: A son is about to be born in the congregation of Israel through whom the entire land of
Egypt is to be destroyed.96

The names of the magicians are here given in Greek (= , as in 2 Tim 3:8),
because the whole fragment was inserted into the targum through an intermediary written in Greek,
where, in accordance with the phonetics of the Greek language, the Semitic consonant group mr was
transformed into mbr97. Of course, nothing prevents the Greek source which was staying behind PseudoJonathan here from being equally Jewish by its religious and ethnical attachment.
The original Semitic name of Jambres, , is preserved in some other rabbinical writings
starting from a mention in the Babylonian Talmud (Menachot 85a)98. This name (mmr) is traditionally

95

Shapira, 2001 (2002), 316.

English translation according to McNamara, 1978 [first publ. 1966], 93-94. Text: Clarke et al., 1984. Cf.
Koch, 1966; for critics of Kochs hypothesis concerning the source of the targumic story, s. Burchard, 1966.
97
As it was shown by Leister Grabbe, 1979. Cf. McNamaras later appreciation of Grabbes critics:
McNamara, 2010, 236.
98
For a detailed review of the Jewish sources representing different Jannes and Jambres traditions, s., first
of all, Strack, Billerbeck, 1926, 660-664, and McNamara, 1978, 82-96, 297-298, but the Greek part of the dossier of
the latter is outdated; s. below.
96

vocalised as Mamre, in conformity with the Masoretic vocalisation of the homographic toponyme (Gen
13:18 etc.)99. Its genuine vocalisation is unknown.
The similar story in Josephus (Antiquities 2:205[IX, 2]) is the following:
...a further incident had the effect of stimulating the Egyptians yet more to exterminate our race. One of
the sacred scribes ( )persons with considerable skill in accurately predicting the
futureannounced to the king that there would be born to the Israelites at that time one who would abase
the sovereignty of the Egyptians and exalt the Israelites, were he reared to manhood, and would surpass all
men in virtue and win everlasting renown. Alarmed, the king, on this sages advice, ordered that every male
child born to the Israelites should be destroyed by being cast into the river... 100

The story is basically the same as in Pseudo-Jonathan, but there is no mention that the future was
predicted in the form of an interpretation of a dream, and the wise man is acting here alone, with no
companion, and anonymous. The future, nevertheless, is the same, and the Pharaoh is anonymous in both
variants of the story. Reasonably, McNamara used this Josephus account for dating the core of the
Pseudo-Jonathans legend101. Now, after Leister Grabbes observations, we have to add that the names of
the pair of wise men do not belong to this ancient core. Thus, it becomes reasonable to believe that, in the
original version of the legend, the wise man was alone, is it is stated by Josephus. However, there is no
reason to reject from the core of the story the episode with the dream: Josephus account seems, in this
respect, to be abbreviated, because the prediction of the scribe appears here from the blue sky, with no
ground.
A story about a wise man who predicted to a king, as an interpretation of his terrifying dream, the
future crash of his power, is the core of our legend. It forms a literary frame which we have met many
times during the present study.
It is not vital to us to know whether the name of the wise man was skipped by Josephus himself
or he did not know it. It is only important to us that, at some stage of transmission (in statu nascendi or
later), the legend became connected with Jannes and Jambresbut, however, most probably, only with
one of the two. Such a possibility is corroborated with the fact that, in the Book of Jannes and Jambres,
which is partially preserved in Greek in Egyptian papyri, Jannes and Jambres often act separately102.
In the Dreams of Shahaisha the literary frame is the same, although it is subdivided into twelve
subsections (different dreams). The king is also anonymous. The name of the wise man is provided, and it
is the same as that of one of the pair of Jannes and Jambres, namely, mmr (Jambres). It is thus reasonable
to conclude that the story of Mamer goes back to a Jewish substrate legend in Aramaic, which was
basically the same as that of Pseudo-Jonathan but, instead of the pair of Jannes and Jambres, it was only
Jambres who was involved.
This Aramaic substrate legend explains an asymmetry within the (Syriac) archetype of the
Slavonic legend, where the king (ahanah) remains unnamed, while the sage has a proper name; in
Slavonic, this asymmetry has been corrected, when kings title was reinterpreted as his proper name.
Such an asymmetry between the anonymity of the king and the explicit proper name of the sage is
an important hallmark, in the (Syriac) archetype of the Dreams, of its early Aramaic substrate.
6.3. Jannes and Jambres: the Iranian Dossier
The Sitz im Leben of the most of the legends related to Jannes and Jambres is either Palestine or
Egypt. However, some Iranian legends existed as well. It is testified by the scanty traces in the literature
in Syriac103. The number of these traces is two, and both belong to the Eastern Syrian (that is, Iranian)
tradition.

99

McNamara, 1978, 90, n. 47.

Tackeray, 1961 [first publ. 1930], 252/253 (txt/tr.).
101
McNamara, 1978, 94-95.
102
Pietersma, 1994. Cf. a previous publication of the English translation in: Pietersma, Lutz, 1985. These
papyrus fragments do not overlap with our legend on the dream of the Pharaoh.
103
For the most complete review of different forms (especially in other languages than Hebrew/Aramaic,
Greek, and Latin) of the legends on Jannes and Jambres, s. especially Gero, 1991.
100

The entry Jannes and Jambres () 104 in the great Syriac-Arabic lexicon composed by
the tenth-century Eastern Syrian (Nestorian) bishop o bar Bahlul (in Arabic, al-asan ibn Bahll)
runs as follows: The name [in singular!] of the two magicians105 that were in the days of the prophet
Moses, and it is said that the two are Hrt and Mrt (
)106. These Hrt and Mrt are, of course, those known from the Quran (2:102), the two humanlike fallen angels.
Gero explains this somewhat odd identification with the possibility for the Arabic root sr to
signify both magician/sorcerer and watcher (a kind of angels)107. However, given that this
identification is witnessed in Iran only, we have to take into account that it can be depending on local
factors. The figures of Hrt and Mrt are now considered as having Iranian origin and going back to the
two of the Avestan Amesha Spenta (lit. Immortal Bounteous, a kind of deities), Haurvatt and
Amrtt, perfection and immortality. This was demonstrated by Jean de Menasce, especially (but
not exclusively) with the help of a Manichaean Pahlavi-Sogdian lexicon where [mwr]dd hrwdd (Middle
Persian for Avestan Amrtt Haurvatt) is glossed as hrwwt mrwwt Hart Mart108.
In the country where Mrt was read as Amrtt and mwrdd, the Semitic form of the name
of Jambres, mmr, could be understood in some association with the latter. Thus, an identification of
Jambres with Mrt became possible and entailed the further identification of Jannes with Hrt.
Thus, bar Bahluls dictionary entry must be considered as a witness of existence, in Iranian
Empire, of some local legends concerning Jannes and Jambres.
The next witness belongs to Thomas of Marga, the Catholicos of the Church of the East (837
850), who included into his Book of Governors (ca 840) his metric homily (memra) in honour of
Maranammeh, an eighth-century metropolitan of Salakh. Maranammeh is praised, among others, for
becoming bishop at the chair of Salakh, the country of Yanes [Jannes] referred to by the Apostles

(
) 109. This is an explicit and rather striking trace of some local
commemoration, although not of Jambres or the both but of Jannes alone. Salakh was a town in the
mountainous region to the east of modern Rawanduz in the Arbil Governorate of Iraqi Kurdistan110.
6.4. The Golden Pillar
After having put the Dreams into the context of the Jannes and Jambres cycle, we become able to
understand the first and the most important dream of the king. The most elaborated interpretation
expressing the main ideas of the whole work is provided here.
The king has seen a golden pillar reaching from earth to heaven. Its interpretation is surprisingly
unfavourable: all the social and even natural processes will change their way in an extremely unhelpful
direction... In this part, the interpretation of the dream follows the canons of the literature of last signs
before the end of the world.
How such an interpretation is connected to the content of the vision? Apparently, if the pillar was
from gold, it could signify something precious and good. However, the context of the Jannes and Jambres
cycle predefines another answer: this pillar is too similar to the pillar of light, which was accompanying
the camp of the sons of Israel during the nighttime. Thus, from the Pharaonic viewpoint (inherited by
the Shahanshah), such a pillar is certainly a symbol of the imminent catastrophe.
7. Conclusions
104

Such are the normal forms of their names in Syriac, obviously resulted from the transliteration in the
Syriac translations of 2 Tim 3:8.
105
On this word, s. Dozy, 1881, 636, s.v. .
106
Duval, 1901, col. 1901.
107
Gero, 1991, 79, n. 32 (the word ar as allegedly having two meanings sorcerer and watcher is
here referred to incorrectly; in fact, it is sir that means sorcerer, and it is sar that means vigil; cf. Dozy,
1881, 682; probably, Gero confused the Arabic root with the corresponding Syriac one, where // corresponds to /s/
in Arabic).
108
de Menasce, 1947; for a broader Iranian context, s. Shapira, 2006. The core of de Menasces
argumentation has been formulated at first by the editor of the manuscript, Walter Henning, in his commentary
(Henning, 1940 (1977), 20; cf. 17 (txt)).
109
Budge, 1893, vol. 1, 176, line 13; cf. Budges tr., ibid., vol. 2, 352. The plural in apostles, where one
has to expect apostle in singular (Paul), is interesting.
110
For the historical Church geography of this region, s. Fiey, 1968, 79-81.

We have to conclude that, in Iran, the figures of Jannes and Jambres continued to be fertile in
producing, in the milieu of the Eastern Syrian Christians (presumably, regardless of their specific Church
divisions), new local legends partially based on the ancient Jewish substrate but digesting local sources
unavailable in other parts of the Christian world. Such are precisely features of the milieu able to produce
the Syriac archetype of the Dreams of Shahaisha, especially in the late seventh or the eighth century,
when the Syrian apocalypticism was awaked by the Arab conquest, especially in Iran (even the most
famous apocalypse of this epoch, Pseudo-Methodius, was written in Iran in Syriac in the 690s).
No wonder that the legends of the Jannes and Jambres cycle were recalled. In Byzantium, other
legends about Jannes and Jambres continued to be quite popular in the ninth century and even were used
as a weapon in the ecclesiastical quarrels of the epoch111.
The most important conclusions are the following:
1. The available Slavonic work The Twelve Dreams of Shahaisha originated in the Old
Bulgarian literature112.
2. It was translated directly from Syriac.
3. The Syriac Christian archetype was produced in Iran, within the wide stream of the
apocalyptic literature in Syriac provoked by the Arab conquest113.
4. The literary frame of the Dreams is inherited from a Second Temple Jewish legend of the
Jannes and Jambres cycle, where the protagonists were an unnamed Pharaoh and Jambres
(under his Aramaic name mmr), and which was dealing with a terrifying dream of the
Pharaoh and its interpretation by Jambres.
5. In the Dreams of Shahaisha, the anonymous Pharaoh became the anonymous Shahanshah,
whereas Jambres preserved his name in an almost unaltered form as Mamer (or, probably,
*Mamer, with further lost of the ending in Slavonic). Egypt as the place of action and the
empire whose future is predicted was changed to Iran.
6. The Syriac archetype of the Dreams was produced with stuffing the ancient Jewish literary
frame with different locally available sources and, most probably, some original creative
production as well.
7. Some of the local sources belonged to internationally widespread folktale motives (as
Veselovsky has shown for the dream Nr 5).
8. The most important sources were the written ones. One of them was a Middle Iranian legend
about the serial dreams of an Indian king before the invasion of Alexander the Great into
India (where Alexander was considered as one of the kings of Iran). A late avatar of this
legend is preserved in the Shanameh as the story of the dreams of Kaid. This legend
contributed to modify the Jewish literary frame (the unique dream was replaced with a series
of dreams) and provided the contents and interpretations for, at least, two dreams, Nrs 3 and
7.
9. This Pahlavi legend had, in turn, an Indian (Buddhist or Jainist) prototype that provided to it,
at least, the general frame and the contents for the same two dreams. In this legend, the king
was the Indian king of Alexanders epoch, Candragupta, the founder of the Maurya dynasty.
10. This Indian legend had, in turn, a Buddhist prototype in the Mahsupina-Jtaka and/or
similar legends concerning the dreams of King Pasenajit114.

111

Gero, 1995.
I avoided here any discussion of the milieu of the Slavonic translation. Cf., however, the references
above, note 71.
113
No exact date for the archetype is available. Its confessional origin remains unknown (main possibilities
are the following communities: Melkites, Church of the East, Jacobites, and Monothelites,but this list is not
exhaustive even for the Syriac-speaking factions and even if limited to Iran).
114
I would like to express my deep gratitude to Nikolai Seleznyov, Elena Ludilova, and Elena Bormotova
for their continuous help.
112

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, . . . . - . . . . 5.
, . ; Moscow,
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,
(2 . 3, 8), , ,
.