Rostam and Akvan the div

Ferdowsi opens this tale with a word to the clever reader. The world is full of wonders, he says, and you yourself are one of them. A sceptic will not believe the old storyteller's tale, but one who thinks about its meaning will accept it.

Kay Khosrow is feasting in a rose garden with his champions when a herdsman comes in from the plain. An onager (gur, the wild ass) has got in among the horse herds, he says: coloured like the sun, as if the sky had washed it in gold, with a line of black musk from its mane to its tail, and strong enough to break the necks of horses. Kay Khosrow knows that no wild ass can overpower a horse. This is no onager. He asks Rostam to go, and to take care: it may be Ahriman.

Rostam searches the pastures for three days. On the fourth he sees it racing past like the north wind and decides to take it alive with his lasso, as a present for the king. As the noose flies the onager vanishes. Now Rostam knows what it is: Akvan the div, and against him cunning will serve better than strength. He shoots an arrow; the creature vanishes again. After three days and nights of riding without food or rest he stops at a spring, unsaddles Rakhsh, uses the saddle for a pillow and falls asleep.

Akvan comes like the wind, cuts round the ground where Rostam lies and lifts it, sleeper and all, into the sky. Rostam wakes in the air. Choose, says the div: shall I throw you on the mountains or into the sea? Rostam thinks fast. Everything a div does is backwards. If he asks for the sea he will be dashed on the rocks. So he says that a sage of Chin once taught that the soul of a drowned man never reaches paradise; let him fall on a mountain, where lions and tigers may see a brave man's hands. Akvan roars and throws him into the deepest sea. Rostam draws his sword, keeps the crocodiles off with it, swims with his other hand and his feet, and reaches the shore.

Rakhsh has gone. Rostam follows his tracks on foot, carrying the saddle, to a meadow where Afrasiab's horse herds graze, and finds Rakhsh among the mares. He lassoes and saddles him, drives off the whole herd, and kills most of the herdsmen who chase him, shouting his name. By chance Afrasiab himself has ridden out that day with wine and musicians to see his horses. Rostam turns on the king's party with bow, sword and mace, puts Afrasiab to flight and takes his four white elephants.

Back at the spring Akvan meets him again and mocks him for coming back for more. This time Rostam's lasso catches him round the middle, his mace smashes the div's head and his dagger cuts it off. Later, over wine, Rostam describes the creature to the king: a head like an elephant's, long hair, a mouth full of boar's tusks, blue eyes and black lips.

Ferdowsi adds a moral: count as a div any man who gives no thanks to God, and anyone who leaves the path of humanity. He even lets the reader take Akvan for a strong man rather than a demon. The Warners, following Nöldeke, suggested that the name comes from Akoman, Evil Thought, one of the demons of Zoroastrian belief. The tale also prepares the next: the great boulder known as the stone of Akvan the div will cover Bizhan's pit.