THE YATKAR-I-ZARIRAN
OR
MEMOIRS OF ZARIR
[This text was taken from The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Volume VII: Ancient Persia, ed. Charles F. Horne, Ph.D., copyright 1917. Scanned (from a photocopy), proofread, and marked up by Chris Weimer in February 2002. It was paired in that book with another ‘historical romance’, The Karnamik-i-Artakhshir or Records of Artakhshir (located at avesta.org).
All footnotes have been embedded into the text within braces and in a smaller font {i.e.}. I no longer have access to the book that I scanned them from, so I am not certain of the translator, but the following is from Horne’s Introduction:]
The “Yatkar-i-Zariran,” purports to tell of the old religious wars of Zoroaster’s time, and recounts the heroic deeds of a champion named Zarir, whom Firdausi also mentions, but who is otherwise unknown. Doubtless this very Yatkar or some older version of it was among the sources to which the poet Firdausi appealed in writing his “Shah-Nameh.” Indeed, the Parsi translator of the Yatkar tells us that the very words of the “Shah-Nameh” often echo those of the ancient Parsi tale.