self tells us how this
first collection was made by the Dihkan Danishver. 'There was a
Pehlevan,' he says, 'of the family of the Dihkans, brave and powerful,
wise and illustrious, who loved to study the ancient times, and to
collect the stories of past ages. He summoned from all the provinces
old men who possessed portions of (i. e. who knew) an ancient work in
which many stories were written. He asked them about the origin of
kings and illustrious heroes, and how they governed the world which
they left to us in this wretched state. These old men recited before
him, one after the other, the traditions of the kings and the changes
in the empire. The Dihkan listened, and composed a book worthy of his
fame. This is the monument he left to mankind, and great and small
have celebrated his name.'

The collector of this first epic poem, under Yezdegird, is called a
Dihkan by Firdusi. Dihkan, according to the Persian dictionaries,
means (1) farmer, (2) historian; and the reason commonly assigned for
this double meaning is, that the Persian farmers happened to be well
read in history. Quatremere, however, has proved that the Dihkans were
the landed nobility of Persia; that they kept up a certain
independence, even under the sway of the Mohammedan Khalifs, and
exercised in the country a sort of jurisdiction in spite of the
commissioners sent from Baghdad, the seat of the government. Thus
Danishver even is called a Dihkan, although he lived previous to the
Arab conquest. With him, the title was only intended to show that it
was in the country and among the peasants that he picked up the
traditions and songs about Jemshid, Feridun, and Rustem. Of his work,
however, we know nothing. It was destroyed by Omar; and, though it
survived in an Arabic translation, even this was lost in later times.
The work, therefore, had to be recommenced when in the eastern
provinces of Persia a national, though no longer a Zoroastrian,
feeling began to revive. The governors of these provinces became
independent as soon as the power of the Khalifs, after its rapid rise,
began to show signs of weakness. Though the Mohammedan religion had
taken root, even among the national party, yet Arabic was no longer
countenanced by the governors of the eastern provinces. Persian was
spoken again at their courts, Persian poets were encouraged, and
ancient national traditions, stripped of their religious garb, began
to be collected anew. It is said that Jacob, the so