This paper has applied a new methodology to identify the “structure” and
interpretation of the Mathnawi of Rumi (1207-1273, Persia). This new
method is that of “parallelism”, “chiasmus” and “synoptically reading”.
This is the first new method to have been presented for the interpretation of
Mathnawi in 700 years.
This story occupies the first nine sections of Book one of the Mathnawi of
Rumi (verses 36- 246), which form a unity both narratively and
thematically.
This is the story of the King and the handmaiden he bought while out
hunting. The King falls in love with her but then she becomes ill, and the
physicians fail to treat her, not having trust in God. The King realises the
physicians’ inability. So he goes to the mosque, and falls asleep while
crying and seeking God’s help. He dreams that his request has been
accepted and a Divine physician shall come, who will be able to cure the
Handmaiden.
The Divine physician comes the next day and the King pledges to serve
him, saying that the Physician is his true love. The Physician is
Muhammad to the King. One should ask God to help him with self-control,
and greed and ingratitude towards divine gifts will lead to their withdrawal.
The King takes the Divine physician to the Handmaiden, and he declares
the previous treatment harmful. The Physician realises that the
Handmaiden is lovesick but he does not say so to the King. He asks to be
left alone with the girl. Once alone, he questions her and finally finds out
that she is in love with a goldsmith, residing in Samarqand, from whom
38 Seyed G. Safavi
she was separated. He promises to cure her, and this sets her free from
further pain and worry.
The Divine physician tells the King to bring the goldsmith, treating him
with respect and honour. The goldsmith is brought to the King, who weds
him to the Handmaiden on the Divine physician’s advice. This cures the
Handmaiden. However, the goldsmith is gradually poisoned, losing his
beauty. The handmaiden falls out of love with him. The goldsmith declares
that he shall be avenged and dies. Once he is dead, the girl is free of his
love and can fall for the King, who is alive.
The goldsmith’s death is not unjust, it is a divine decision, with the King
being God’s elect.
At the allegorical level, the king represents the ruh (spirit) and the
Handmaiden the nafs (soul or self-hood) with him the ruh fall in love. The
nafs is secretly in love with a goldsmith who represents either the material
world, dunya, or worldly pleasures, ladha’idh-i dunyawi. Either by bad
luck or through fate, qada, she falls ill but the doctors, representing aql-e
juzi, personal intelligence, fail to cure her because they are too arrogant to
say ‘if God wills’. This, then, is the human dilemma. The spirit has come
from God and is destined to return but has formed an attachment to the
self-hood with which it is necessarily associated, and the self-hood is
attached to the world. The King is out hunting, symbolic of being in search
of spiritual realities, and this strain the self-hood, which falls ill through
being pulled in two directions. This is a realisitic spiritual diagnosis of
humanity, a condition in which one is subject to the laws of fate and which
one’s own arrogant intelligence cannot solve. It is also the condition of
salik, the Sufi traveller, at the very beginning of his Path. The Divine
physician represents Perfect Guide or Perfect Man.
“The major discovery”, confirmed by this analysis, is that the organisation
of the sections in the discourse is not sequentially but synoptically reading;
the primary relationships between sections in the discourse are organised
by parallelism and chiasmus.
Analysis of the story shows both chiasmus and thematic parallelism. The overall “structure” is in the form of ABCDEDCBA, with the emphasis on
E, i.e. section 5, which is also the longest section.