Year-riddle

The year-riddle is one of the most widespread, and apparently most ancient, international riddle-types in Eurasia. This type of riddle is first attested in Vedic tradition thought to originate in the second millennium BCE.

Faroese stamp visualising the year-riddle.

Research

Studies have surveyed the exceptionally wide attestation of this riddle type.[1][2][3][4] The riddle is conventionally thought to been eastern in origin,[5] though this may simply reflect the early date of writing in the east. A variety of guiding metaphors appear in the Year-riddle, and it can be helpful to analyse its variants on these lines.[6] It has been argued that 'versions usually express the conventional tropes of a given culture or society and indicate regional sources'.[7]

Year-riddles are numbered 984, 1037 and 1038 in Archer Taylor's English Riddles from Oral Tradition.[8] As a folktale motif, the riddle is motif H721 in the classificatory system established by Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature.[9]

Examples

Most year-riddles are guided by one (or more) of four metaphors: wheels, trees, animals (particularly human families), and artefacts (particularly architecture).

The first three all make an appearance in the year-riddle that appears in several versions of the Tale of Ahikar. This story seems to have originated in Aramaic around the late seventh or early sixth century BCE.[10] The relevant passage is lost from the earliest surviving versions, but the following instance, from a later Syriac version, is thought likely to represent the early form of the text:

[The king] said to me, “Aḥiḳar, expound to me this riddle: A pillar has on its head twelve cedars; in every cedar there are thirty wheels, and in every wheel two cables, one white and one black.” And I answered and said to him, “(...) The pillar of which thou hast spoken to me is the year: the twelve cedars are the twelve months of the year; the thirty wheels are the thirty days of the month; the two cables, one white and one black, are the day and the night.[11]

Wheels and wheeled vehicles

Ancient Indian sources afford the earliest attestations of the year-riddle: examples in the Rigveda are thought to originate c. 1500×1200 BCE. Their use of metaphors of wheels reflects the prominence of the concept of the wheel of time in Asian culture.[12]

Hymn 164 of the first book of the Rigveda can be understood to comprise a series of riddles or enigmas.[13] Many are now obscure, but may have been an enigmatic exposition of the pravargya ritual.[14] Rigveda 1.164.11 runs:

Devanagari दवादशारं नहि तज्जराय वर्वर्ति चक्रं परि दयां रतस्य आ पुत्रा अग्ने मिथुनासो अत्र सप्त शतानि विंशतिश्च तस्थुः[15]

Latin transliteration duvā^́daśāraṃ nahí táj járāya várvarti cakrám pári dyā^́m r̥tásya ā^́ putrā^́ agne mithunā^́so átra saptá śatā^́ni viṃśatíś ca tasthuḥ[16]

Modern English translation With twelve spokes—for it does not become old— the wheel of the truthful order turns on and on around the sky. Sons, in pairs, o Agni, seven hundred and twenty, are standing.[17]

Meanwhile, 1.164.48 gives:

Devanagari दवादश परधयश्चक्रमेकं तरीणि नभ्यानि क उ तच्चिकेत तस्मिन साकं तरिशता न शङकवो. अर्पिताः षष्टिर्न चलाचलासः[18]

Latin transliteration duvā^́daśa pradháyaś cakrám ékaṃ trī^́ṇi nábhyāni ká u tác ciketa tásmin sākáṃ · triśatā^́ ná śaṅkávo arpitā^́ḥ ṣaṣṭír ná calācalā^́saḥ[19]

Modern English translation The felly-pieces are twelve, the wheel is one, the nave-pieces three; who has understood this? On it are placed, as it were, 360 pegs that do not wobble.[20]

Likewise, in the Mahabharata, the riddles posed to Ashtavakra by King Janaka in the third book begin with the year-riddle: what has six naves, twelve axles, twenty-four joints, and three hundred and sixty spokes?[21][22]

A later Indic example using a similar metaphor is from the riddles ascribed to Amir Khusrau (1253–1325):

Baarah ghodey, tees garaari Teen-sau-pachpan chali savaari Garmi, sardi, aandhi aavey, kabhu rukay na, chalte jaavey.	Twelve horses, thirty pullers, Passengers, three hundred and fifty-five Come summer, winter or storm, Never stop—always mobile.[23]

Here the three hundred and fifty-five days of the year correspond to the twelve lunar cycles of the Islamic calendar year.[24]

Trees and other plants

A large number of variants (numbered 1037-38 in Archer Taylor's English Riddles from Oral Tradition) compare the year to a tree; indeed, 'riddlers rarely use the scene of a tree and its branches for other subjects than the year and the months or the sun and its rays'.[25] The tree is also the metaphor usually found in Arabic folktales.[26] The popularity of tree-imagery is thought to echo the widespread popularity of trees as a metaphor for the world or life in Eurasian traditions.[27]

Most year-riddles of this kind can be thought of as containing some or all of the following components:[28]

code	component	alternative component	solution
A	the tree		year
B	twelve branches		months
C	fifty-two flowers	four nests	weeks/seasons
D	365 or 366 leaves	seven eggs	days of year/week
E	three or six eggs		Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost (one or two days each)
F	twenty-four young birds		hours
G	their sixty steps		minutes

Versions containing only parts of the tree occur across Eurasia, whereas the versions with the nests occur only in Europe.[29]

Examples include this verse from the early eleventh-century Shahnameh:

What are the dozen cypresses erect
In all their bravery and loveliness,
Each one of them with thirty boughs bedeckt--
In Persia never more and never less?.[30]

To which Zāl responds

First as to those twelve cypresses which rear
Themselves, with thirty boughs upon each tree:
They are the twelve new moons of every years,
Like new-made monarchs, throned in majesty.
Upon the thirtieth day its course is done
For each; thus our revolving periods run.[31]

Later examples include:

číst ʔan xús dærǽxte sǽbz neqáb šaxháyæš duwazdǽ ʔæn bæ hesáb tu gǽr ʔæz rúye ʔáqil béšmarì sí bæhǽr šàx bærg pɪndari sál.	What is that good tree, green-veiled, Its branches are twelve in number, If you count from the face of intelligence, Thirty leaves on every branch you will find. Year [mid-twentieth-century Persian riddle][32]

Yonder stands a tree of honor, twelve limbs grow upon her, every limb a different name. It would take a wise man to tell you the same. [English][33]

A tree with twelve branches and thirty leaves, of which fifteen are black and fifteen white, strewn with open flowers of whitish yellow [Malay][34]

There stands a tree with twelve branches, on each branch are four nests, in each nest are six young, and the seventh is the mother. [Lithuanian][35]

More elaborate variations on this theme are also found. One Icelandic example is preserved in three early-modern manuscripts of the riddle-contest in the medieval Heiðreks saga and runs: 'Hvert er það þingið sem er með tólf blómstrum en í hvorju blómstri eru fjögur hreiður? En í hverju hreiður eru sjö fuglar og er sitt nafn sér. Hverjum getið? Tólf mánuðir, sex vikur, sjö dagar' ('what is that assembly which has twelve flowers, and in each flower are four nests? And in each nest are seven birds and each has its own name? How are they guessed? 12 months, 4 weeks, 7 days').[36]

Human families

Human families provide a guiding metaphor for a number of year riddles (numbered 984 in Archer Taylor's English Riddles from Oral Tradition), though almost never in English-language tradition.[37] Although only first attested in the roughly tenth-century CE Greek Anthology, the following Greek riddle is there ascribed to Cleobulus (fl. C6 BCE); even if it is not that ancient, the attribution to him would suggest that the riddle was thought of in Ancient Greek culture as itself being very old:

Εἶς ὁ πατήρ, παῖδες δυοκαίδεκα· τῶν δὲ ἑκάστῳ παῖδες <δὶς> τριήκοντα διάνδιχα εἶδος ἔχουσαι· αἱ μὲν λευκαὶ ἔασιν ἰδεῖν, αἱ δ᾽ αὖτε μέλαιναι· ἀθάνατοι δέ τ᾽ ἐοῦσαι, ἀποφθινύθουσιν ἅπασαι[38]	There is one father and twelve children; of these each Has twice thirty daughters of different appearance: Some are white to look at and the others black in turn; They are immortal and yet they all fade away.[39]

Another example of the family metaphor is this French riddle, first published in 1811:

Nous sommes douze sœurs, filles d'un même père, Pas toujours d'une même mère. Chacune successivement Enfante quatre mâles, Qui produisent pareillement, A distances égales Plus de trois cents filles par jour, Chacune à son tour. Ceux-la naissent de leurs femelles; Nous en naissons aussi bien qu'elles; Ils nous forment, nous les formons, Après quoi nous recommençons.[40]	We are twelve sisters, daughters of the same father, Not always of the same mother. Each one successively Gives birth to four males, Who produce similarly, At equal intervals More than three hundred daughters a day, Each in his turn. Those male ones are born from their females; We are born just as those female ones are; The male ones form us, we form them, After which we start again.

The only English-language example of this kind of year-riddle found by Taylor was from Saba Island in the Antilles: 'A fader had twelve sons, de second one de younges'. — 'Twelve months of the year, de second one February'.[41]

Other animals

Eastern Europe and Asia exhibit a range of other animal metaphors for the year, usually involving a team of twelve oxen pulling one plough or gatherings of different species of birds.[42]

Artefacts

A number of year-riddles use man-made objects as their controlling metaphor. For example, a modern Greek riddle invokes a cask made with twelve staves, and a Parsi riddle the contents of a chest. But most often these riddles draw on architecture,[43] as in the following mid-twentieth-century example from central Myanmar:

Ein-daw-thar-lan:

set-nhit khan:
ta khan: thone gyait
ah phay eit
phwiṇ hlet ta gar:
lay: paut htar:
win bu twet bu bar yẹ lar:

Hnit

It is a beautiful house with twelve rooms and thirty people can sleep in each room. There are four doors left open. Have you ever passed through these doors?
A year.[44]

References

1. August Wünsche, 'Das Rätsel vom Jahr und seinen Zeitabschnitten in der Weltlitteratur', Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturgeschichte, Ser. NF, vol. 9 (1896), 425-56.
2. Antti Aarne, Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26–28 (Helsinki/Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918–20), I 74–178.
3. Archer Taylor, A Bibliography of Riddles, Folklore Fellows Communications, 126 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1939), pp. 412-20.
4. M. L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 370-74. ISBN 9780199280759.
5. Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (p. 135).
6. Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (p. 132).
7. Živilė Gimbutas, The Riddle in the Poem (Dallas: University Press of America, 2004), p. 23.
8. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), pp. 370-73, 412-21.
9. Hasan M. El-Shamy, Folk Traditions of the Arab World: A Guide to Motif Classification, 2 vols (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 164 [H720].
10. Ioannis M. Konstantakos, 'A Passage to Egypt: Aesop, the Priests of Heliopolis and the Riddle of the Year (Vita Aesopi 119–120)', Trends in Classics, 3 (2011), 83-112 (p. 84), DOI 10.515/tcs.2011.005.
11. Ioannis M. Konstantakos, 'A Passage to Egypt: Aesop, the Priests of Heliopolis and the Riddle of the Year (Vita Aesopi 119–120)', Trends in Classics, 3 (2011), 83-112 (p. 99), DOI 10.515/tcs.2011.005, quoting The Story of Aḥiḳar from the Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Old Turkish, Greek and Slavonic Versions, ed. by F. C. Conybeare, J. Rendel Harris and Agnes Smith Lewis, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913), p. 121; cf. pp. 20 (Slavonic version), 49 (first Armenian version), 81 (second Armenian version). The Arabic, Ethiopic and Romanian versions lack the relevant episode.
12. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 418.
13. Martin Haug, 'Vedische Räthselfragen und Räthselsprüche (Uebersetzung und Erklärung von Rigv. 1, 164)', Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-philologischen und historischen Classe der Köngl. bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München (1875), 457–515.
14. Jan E. M. Houben, "The Ritual Pragmatics of a Vedic Hymn: The 'Riddle Hymn' and the Pravargya Ritual", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 120 (2000), 499–536 (English translation pp. 533–36), doi:10.2307/606614. JSTOR 606614.
15. http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rvsan/rv01164.htm
16. Rig Veda: a Metrically Restored Text, ed. by Barend A. van Nooten and Gary B. Holland (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/lrc/rigveda/RV01.php#H164.
17. Jan E. M. Houben, 1The Ritual Pragmatics of a Vedic Hymn: The "Riddle Hymn" and the Pravargya Ritual', Journal of the American Oriental Society, 120 (2000), 499–536 (p. 534), doi:10.2307/606614. JSTOR 606614.
18. http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rvsan/rv01164.htm
19. Rig Veda: a Metrically Restored Text, ed. by Barend A. van Nooten and Gary B. Holland (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/lrc/rigveda/RV01.php#H164.
20. Jan E. M. Houben, 'The Ritual Pragmatics of a Vedic Hymn: The "Riddle Hymn" and the Pravargya Ritual', Journal of the American Oriental Society, 120 (2000), 499–536 (p. 536), doi:10.2307/606614. JSTOR 606614.
21. Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Riddles: Perspectives on the Use, Function, and Change in a Folklore Genre, Studia Fennica, Folkloristica, 10 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2001), pp. 11–12; doi:10.21435/sff.10.
22. Ioannis M. Konstantakos, 'Trial by Riddle: The Testing of the Counsellor and the Contest of Kings in the Legend of Amasis and Bias', Classica et Mediaevalia, 55 (2004), 85-137 (pp. 111-13).
23. Amir Khusro: The Man in Riddles, ed. and trans. by Ankit Chadha (Gurgaon: Penguin, 2016), no. 15.
24. Amir Khusro: The Man in Riddles, ed. and trans. by Ankit Chadha (Gurgaon: Penguin, 2016), notes.
25. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), pp. 412-21 (quoting p. 416).
26. Hasan M. El-Shamy, Folk Traditions of the Arab World: A Guide to Motif Classification, 2 vols (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 164 [H720].
27. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 412.
28. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 413 (citing Sigismund Szendrey, Ethnographia, 32 (1921), 71-73).
29. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 413.
30. The Sháhnáma of Firdausí, trans. by Arthur George Warner and Edmond Warner, 9 vols (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1905-25), I p. 308 [V.208.6-9].
31. The Sháhnáma of Firdausí, trans. by Arthur George Warner and Edmond Warner, 9 vols (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1905-25), I p. 309 [V.209.3-8].
32. Charles T. Scott, Persian and Arabic Riddles: A Language-Centered Approach to Genre Definition, Publication of the Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, 39 (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1965), p. 42
33. Cited by Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (p. 132).
34. Cited by Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (p. 132).
35. Cited by Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (p. 132).
36. Text and translation adapted from Jeffrey Scott Love, The Reception of 'Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks' from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century, Münchener nordistische Studien, 14 (Munich: Utz, 2013) (with normalisation of the Icelandic to modern spelling). Love cites MSS AM 167b 8vo, AM 738 4to, and Lbs 1199 4to.
37. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 370.
38. Quoted by Ionannis M. Konstantakos, 'Amasis, Bias and the Seven Sages as Riddlers', Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft (neue Folge), 29 (2005), 11-46 (p. 15 n. 10).
39. Quoted from Christine Luz, 'What has it got in its Pocketses? Or, What Makes a Riddle a Riddle?', in The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry, ed. by Jan Kwapzt, David Petrain, and Mikolaj Szymanski (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 83-99 (p. 86).
40. August Wünsche, 'Das Rätsel vom Jahr und seinen Zeitabschnitten in der Weltlitteratur', Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturgeschichte, Ser. NF, vol. 9 (1896), 425-56 (p. 445).
41. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 373.
42. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), pp. 416-18.
43. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), pp. 418-20.
44. Maung Than Sein and Alan Dundes, 'Twenty-Three Riddles from Central Burma', The Journal of American Folklore, 77 [no. 303] (January-March 1964), 69-75 (p. 71).