The Snake-Catcher and the Frozen Snake
Not Dead, Only Frozen
Masnavi III.1040–1053 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1930He had bound it with thick ropes: that careful keeper had taken great precaution for it.During the delay (interval) of expectation and coming together, the sun of ‘Iráq shone upon the snake.The sun of the hot country warmed it; the cold humours went out of its limbs.It had been dead, and it revived: from astonishment (at feeling the sun's heat) the dragon began to uncoil itself.By the stirring of that dead serpent the people's amazement was multiplied a hundred thousandfold.With amazement they started shrieking and fled en masse from its motion.It set about bursting the bonds, and at that loud outcry (of the people) the bonds on every side went crack, crack.It burst the bonds and glided out from beneath—a hideous dragon roaring like a lion.Many people were killed in the rout: a hundred heaps were made of the fallen slain.The snake-catcher became paralysed with fear on the spot, crying, “What have I brought from the mountains and the desert?”The blind sheep awakened the wolf: unwittingly it went towards its ‘Azrá’íl (Angel of death).The dragon made one mouthful of that dolt: blood-drinking (bloodshed) is easy for Ḥajjáj.It wound and fastened itself on a pillar and crunched the bones of the devoured man.The dragon is thy sensual soul: how is it dead? It is (only) frozen by grief and lack of means.
- First attested
- 1278The text is Mathnawī III.1040–1053. No autograph survives. The oldest witness is the Qoniya (Konya) manuscript, which Nicholson designated G and describes as “transcribed in A.H. 677-A.D. 1278”, five years after Rūmī died. His 1930 edition follows G only from Book III, v. 2836; for the earlier part he printed an Appendix of every change G's readings would require in the English of Books I, II and III (vv. 1-2835), and it lists none for these lines. Every English phrase quoted here is Nicholson's, from his 1930 translation.
- Claimed
- the 1260sasserted by Book III carries no internal date. Its proem asks Ḥusām al-Dīn to “bring (into verse and writing) this Third Book” (III.1, Nicholson 1930), so it was begun after Book II, whose proem dates that book's beginning to “the year six hundred and sixty-two” (II.7, Nicholson 1926) — A.H. 662, a year that began in 1263 and ended in 1264. Rūmī died on 17 December 1273.
The thaw is a figure twice over. Forty-five lines earlier Rūmī calls the whole world frozen — its name, jamād, means inanimate, and jāmid means frozen — awaiting the sun of the Resurrection to show it moving (III.1008–1009); at III.1053 the frozen thing is the self, and the sun that wakes it is means.
Mathnawī III.1008–1009 and III.1053 (Nicholson 1930).
A snake-catcher hauls a frozen “dead” dragon to Baghdad for a show; the sun thaws it, and it swallows him.
Mathnawī III.976–1066, the story Nicholson lists as “The Snake-catcher and the frozen Snake”. Hunting snakes by incantation in the mountains in the days of snow, a snake-catcher finds a huge dragon he takes for dead; it is frozen. He winds it in ropes, carries it to Baghdad to show for a paltry fee, and sets up on the bank of the Tigris. While he waits for the crowd to thicken, the sun of ʿIrāq thaws the beast: it bursts its bonds, many die in the rout, and it swallows its captor. Rūmī breaks into the tale with the frozen world that will be seen to move at the Resurrection (III.1008–1009), and closes it on Moses: “It needs a Moses to kill the dragon” (III.1065), just before the heading on Pharaoh's threat to Moses. The passage is III.1040–1053.
Light
It refuses the comfort of thinking an appetite cured because it is quiet: what poverty and grief have frozen is alive, and the tale shows exactly how it wakes — by warmth, a crowd, and waiting.
Shadow
The remedy is severe — “Mortify it and become safe from (spiritual) death; have no mercy” (III.1059) — and the crowd who came to gape, “myriads of simpletons”, die in the rout alongside the showman.
