Testing with stone or fire: Rethinking the semantics of ʹʹstoning the jarʹʹ and its connection to ʹʹpassage in fireʹʹ in Ferdowsiʹʹs Shahnameh

Ferdowsiʹs mythological epic--The Shahnameh--is a treasure of original Persian words and expressions. Centuries after its production, it still has enough merit to be researched and re-discovered. Many scholars have researched the different literary and linguistic aspects of it, but none to our knowledge has scrutinized the book from the perspective of ʹsemantic shiftʹ yet. This paper aims at showing how the Persian expression ʹsang bar cebu zadanʹ (meaning ʹstoning the jarʹ) has gone through a diachronic semantic shift whereby losing its original meaning with which it was first used in Ferdowsiʹs epic--The Shahnameh. To expatiate upon the original meaning of the expression, we resort to the story of Saiavashʹs ʹpassage through fireʹ as the test of his innocence.