Dakhoo, The Man of Proverbs By: Ali Akbar Abedian Kasgari IRAN
The paper will provide a brief overview of the life of Allameh Ali Akbar Khan Dehkhodā (1879–1956) , a 20th-century Persian Paremiologist, Poet, Linguist, Lexicographer, Social Thinker and Political Activist who is best remembered for his prominent works of Paremiology and lexicography.
Dehkhodā was born in Tehran, his father died when he was only 10 years old. Dehkhodā quickly excelled in Persian literature, Arabic and French and graduated from College studying political science. Then he served as Dean of Tehran School of Political Science and later the School of Law of the University of Tehran. In 1903, he went to the Balkan Peninsula as an Iranian embassy employee, but came back to Iran two years later and became involved in the Constitutional Revolution of Iran.
Dehkhodā is author of Amsal O Hekam (Persian Proverbs and Mottos) in four volumes and nearly 50 thousand proverbs, the most considerable book of Persian Proverbs.
His lexicographic masterpiece Loghat-Naameh, is the largest comprehensive Persian dictionary ever published, comprise 16 volumes. The complete work is an ongoing effort that entails over 45 years of efforts by Dehkhodā and a cadre of other experts, up to now 27000 pages of this valuable work is accomplished. In 1925 Iranian law decreed the compilation of an official Persian Dictionary, work on the dictionary was begun by Dehkhodā, and upon his death, his residence was named the Dehkhodā Institute and housed the academic staff from several Iranian universities who compiled the dictionary. After, responsibility for the dictionary was delegated to Tehran University's Department of Persian Language and Literature, and the Dehkhodā Institute became part of University of Tehran. Nowadays Dehkhodā Institute is also an International Center for Persian Studies and is the main official international center for teaching the Persian language and literature in Iran which offers courses in Persian for foreign and Iranian students, as well as higher level courses for graduates of Persian Language and Literature, Oriental Studies and Iranian Studies.
Dehkhodā also annotated Persian literary masterpiece such as classics of Abureyhan Birouni, Naser Khosrow, Seyd Hassan Ghaznavi, Hafez, Manoochehri, Farokhi, Masoud Saed, and Ibn Yamin. He also translated Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws) into Persian, and wrote a French-Persian Dictionary as well.
The First World War completely changed the life of Dehkhodā, both as a Paremiologist and a Political Activist and represented a rather general political problem for him, too. The social literary and commentary works of Dehkhodā actually started through his collaboration with Journal of Sur-e Esrafil where he created a satirical political column entitled as Nonsense or Fiddle-Faddle (Charand-O-Parand). The Persian term of Dakho was his signature or his pen name for that column. Dakho means not only as the Administrator of a Village (Dehkhodā or Kadkhoda), but it also refers to a Naive or an unsophisticated Person who uses proverbs to understand the social phenomenon and to describe his points. Trying to understand why countries, all through the history misused the society’s illiteracy and imposed wars against Iran, he designed this new system of political Naive character, intended to improve social general knowledge and ultimately bring peace. Dehkhodā and his colleague Mirza Jahangir khan Sur-e Esrafile had been publishing the Sur-e Esrafil newspaper for about two years, but the authoritarian King Mohammad Ali Shah disbanded the parliament and the media and exiled Dehkhodā and some other liberalists. Dehkhodā continued publishing articles and editorials in exile. Thus, in the end, thoughts about peace and improvement of human affairs led Dehkhodā to his strife to reform the state – an endeavor to which he devoted his life. When King Mohammad Ali Shah was deposed in 1911, he returned to the country and became a member of the new Parliament. Dehkhodā’s poem (Morghe Sahar) which is called the Persian version of Alfred de Musset’s Rappelle-toi, is writtem in exile in Switzerland’s Yverdon-les-Bains about his assassinated colleague Mirza Jahangir khan Sur-e Esrafil and shows his enthusiasm of peace and brotherhood, his beliefs in principles received national acclaim.
Dehkhodā’s quest for peace no doubt found its reflection in his lifelong collecting of proverbs. The collection Amsal O Hekam was organized into thousands of detailed proverbs ranging from general matters to very specific ones. The body of the proverbs included in the collection will be briefly characterized and his tentative definitions of proverbs will be discussed in more detail in the paper.
Key Words: Dehkhodā, Paremiology, Proverbs, Definition, Phenomenon.