Bozorgmehr reads the king's dream

Ferdowsi opens this tale with a warning: never treat a dream as idle, for dreams are a share of prophecy, above all the dreams of a king. One night Anushirvan dreams that a royal tree grows up in front of his throne. He calls for wine and music, but a sharp-toothed boar sits down beside him on the throne and asks to drink from his cup.

In the morning the king sits on his throne in a black mood. His interpreter of dreams has no answer, and a man who admits his ignorance, the poem remarks, escapes blame. So Anushirvan sends wise men out to every land, each with a purse of ten thousand dirhams for whoever can read the dream.

One of them, Azad-Sarv, comes to Merv. There he finds a priest teaching boys the Zand, the commentary on the Avesta, harshly and at the top of his voice. The eldest pupil, a boy called Bozorgmehr, hears the envoy's question and speaks up: this quarry is his, interpreting dreams is his business. His teacher shouts at him to mind his book. The envoy defends the boy, but Bozorgmehr will say nothing except before the king.

On the road they stop by water and rest under a tree. Bozorgmehr sleeps with his cloak drawn over his face. The envoy, still awake, sees a black snake pull the cloak away, smell the sleeping boy from head to foot and glide up the tree, vanishing among the thin branches as the boy wakes. The envoy calls on God and tells himself that this boy will rise high.

Before Anushirvan, Bozorgmehr hears the dream and answers at once: among the women of the king's household there is a young man dressed as a woman. He asks for the palace to be cleared of strangers and for the women to walk past the king. They pass once, and no man is seen; Anushirvan rages like a lion. Bozorgmehr has them pass again with their veils put aside, and a young man appears, tall as a cypress and shaking like a willow. There are seventy women in that chamber. One, the daughter of the governor of Chach, explains that the youth is her brother, born of the same mother, who followed her into the palace and wore women's clothes because he was too shy to face the king. Anushirvan has them both hanged, head down, in his women's quarters.

Bozorgmehr is given a purse, horses and robes, and his name is written in the king's register among the priests and counsellors. Day by day his fortune grows. Anushirvan keeps seventy learned men at court, and in the banquets of wisdom that follow, the young man from Merv outshines them all.