Sayenfurasa

Sayenfurasa is an ancient compilation of poems in Mirselec; its meaning in Mirselec is "Ode-Compilation", the word sayen literally referring to a type of poetry during the earliest days of the kingdoms sung at festivities and religious sacrifices. It is the oldest known compilation of Mirselec poetry, and contains a total of 417 poems, divided into several parts by their form:

• Sayen, the religious odes, of which there are 92

• Karsayen, the royal odes sung during major festivities, of which there are 35

• Menata, folk songs, of which there are 212

• Honameri, individual prayers and invocations to gods, of which there are 62

• Wasantosa, longer poems meant to celebrate legendary figures, of which there are 15.

While this categorisation adds a formal air to the collection, the works collected within the Sayenfurasa are often striking in their deeply personal tone, vivid use of images and symbols, and utilisation of implication to state their feelings.

The Sayenfurasa is the oldest known compilation of Mirselec poetry, and is one of the most revered works of classical literature in the language; in the words of Hirdan Gersenga, "what was written therein (within the Sayenfurasa) was the wood, and all poets after that are merely carvers." Having been dated back to around 620-650 DN, the last datable poem within this collection was from about 595 DN, and the oldest ones have been estimated to date from as far back as 100 BDN. As a text, it forms one of the several core texts for secondary students learning ancient and classical Mirselec.

History and Texts

The work of compiling the text in its entirety is often attributed to Oristeonme, a poet and attendant at a temple who was called to the court of the Kingdom of Masal; he is, however, widely seen to be the last in a series of compilers, especially of several well known poets (often known in Risevan art and literature as the Songwriters of Kormanoi, after the city of Kormanoi which was then an important city in the Masal kingdom) who had travelled widely and then, in around 580 DN, compiled the bulk of the work in the Menata and Sayen.

Unlike many other classical Mirselec texts which, due to royal whims or rivalries between nations, have survived only in fragmentary form, the Saeynfurasa has survived in highly intact form; the oldest known manuscript of the compilation, as part of the Omesa Tomb Manuscripts, dates from around 865 DN and is presently preserved in the Risevan National Museum. Several other nearly complete texts, dating from as far back as the late 10th century, also survive in university libraries.

The text is notorious amongst linguists of ancient Mirselec for its large number of hapices - words which only appear once in the text, and which in many cases do not appear in other texts at all. While contextual speculation, as well as the extremely valuable edtiion dating from 1297 which was massively annotated by the poet Moso Tailda, have shed light on many of these rare words, several words' exact meanings remain unknown.

Organisation

The Sayenfurasa is firstly organised by form into the five categories; within these categories the poems are then further organised in different ways:

• Within the Sayen, Kersayen and Menata, the songs are grouped by the number of syllables in each line; each such categorisation is given a regional title, even if the poems contained therein do not necessarily come from that region. Therefore the Songs of Bidan are all of the form 5-7-6-7-7-7-6-6, while the Songs of Rutimuna are all of the form 5-5-6-5-8-5 in each stanza.

• Within the Honameri and Wasantosa the poems are simlpy grouped by their subjects; namely the major gods in the former, and the respective heroes and great men in the latter.