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Seven Wise Masters
The Seven Wise Masters (also called the Seven Sages or Seven Wise Men) is a frame narrative with multiple embedded stories, known across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa from the ninth century onwards. It is one of the most widely transmitted tales of premodernity, translated and adapted into at least 32 languages, with each version considerably different from the others.
A king or emperor sends his son, the young prince, to be educated away from the court by seven wise masters. On his return to court, the prince is bound to a week's silence to avert danger foreseen in his horoscope. His stepmother attempts to seduce him but is rejected. The woman accuses the son of attempted rape and seeks to bring about his death. The seven sages each tell a story in his defence, and in many versions the woman reciprocates with her own stories. Finally the prince's lips are unsealed, the truth exposed, and the wicked woman is either pardoned or executed.
The transmission of the narrative falls into two main branches: the older branch consists of versions often referred to collectively as the Book of Sindbad, contains a distinctive series of embedded tales. The plot is usually set at a royal court whose king has several wives or sexual partners, and whose most prominent sage is known as Sindbad, Sindibad, Sendebar, Syntipas or similar. The younger branch is usually known as the Seven Sages of Rome, Dolopathos or Diocletian and contains its own relatively consistent series of embedded tales. It is normally set at the court of the Emperor of Rome, who remarries after the death of his son's mother.
The earliest existing version of the Book of Sindbad that can be relatively secured dated is the Greek Book of Syntipas the Philosopher, composed by Michael Andreopoulos in Anatolia in the late eleventh century. Andreopoulos plausibly claims to have worked from a Syriac translation, which was itself based on an Arabic translation by one Musa, of a Persian text. All these older texts are lost, but there are surviving versions from the twelfth century onwards in Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Hebrew, and Spanish. No traces of a Sanskrit version have been found.
The Syriac Sindban is one of the oldest extant versions of the narrative.
The Byzantine version of the text.
There are three versions in Persian, including one in verse, and two in prose, dating from the late twelfth century to the late fourteenth century. One of the prose texts, by Nakhshabi, is the eighth night in his Tutinama story-cycle.
While the surviving versions of the Seven Vizirs are dated later than many of the other texts in the Eastern tradition, earlier versions are presumed to have existed.
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Seven Wise Masters
The Seven Wise Masters (also called the Seven Sages or Seven Wise Men) is a frame narrative with multiple embedded stories, known across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa from the ninth century onwards. It is one of the most widely transmitted tales of premodernity, translated and adapted into at least 32 languages, with each version considerably different from the others.
A king or emperor sends his son, the young prince, to be educated away from the court by seven wise masters. On his return to court, the prince is bound to a week's silence to avert danger foreseen in his horoscope. His stepmother attempts to seduce him but is rejected. The woman accuses the son of attempted rape and seeks to bring about his death. The seven sages each tell a story in his defence, and in many versions the woman reciprocates with her own stories. Finally the prince's lips are unsealed, the truth exposed, and the wicked woman is either pardoned or executed.
The transmission of the narrative falls into two main branches: the older branch consists of versions often referred to collectively as the Book of Sindbad, contains a distinctive series of embedded tales. The plot is usually set at a royal court whose king has several wives or sexual partners, and whose most prominent sage is known as Sindbad, Sindibad, Sendebar, Syntipas or similar. The younger branch is usually known as the Seven Sages of Rome, Dolopathos or Diocletian and contains its own relatively consistent series of embedded tales. It is normally set at the court of the Emperor of Rome, who remarries after the death of his son's mother.
The earliest existing version of the Book of Sindbad that can be relatively secured dated is the Greek Book of Syntipas the Philosopher, composed by Michael Andreopoulos in Anatolia in the late eleventh century. Andreopoulos plausibly claims to have worked from a Syriac translation, which was itself based on an Arabic translation by one Musa, of a Persian text. All these older texts are lost, but there are surviving versions from the twelfth century onwards in Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Hebrew, and Spanish. No traces of a Sanskrit version have been found.
The Syriac Sindban is one of the oldest extant versions of the narrative.
The Byzantine version of the text.
There are three versions in Persian, including one in verse, and two in prose, dating from the late twelfth century to the late fourteenth century. One of the prose texts, by Nakhshabi, is the eighth night in his Tutinama story-cycle.
While the surviving versions of the Seven Vizirs are dated later than many of the other texts in the Eastern tradition, earlier versions are presumed to have existed.
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