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.
Research Studies have surveyed the exceptionally wide attestation of this riddle type.August Wünsche, 'Das Rätsel vom Jahr und seinen Zeitabschnitten in der Weltlitteratur', Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturgeschichte, Ser. NF, vol. 9 (1896), 425-56.Antti Aarne, Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26–28 (Helsinki/Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918–20), I 74–178.Archer Taylor, A Bibliography of Riddles, Folklore Fellows Communications, 126 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1939), pp. 412-20.M. L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 370-74. . The riddle is conventionally thought to be eastern in origin,Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (p. 135). 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.Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (p. 132). It has been argued that 'versions usually express the conventional tropes of a given culture or society and indicate regional sources'.Živilė Gimbutas, The Riddle in the Poem (Dallas: University Press of America, 2004), p. 23.
Year-riddles are numbered 984, 1037 and 1038 in Archer Taylor's English Riddles from Oral Tradition.Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), pp. 370-73, 412-21. As a folktale motif, the riddle is motif H721 in the classificatory system established by Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature.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].
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.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. 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.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.
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.Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 418.
Hymn 164 of the first book of the Rigveda can be understood to comprise a series of riddles or enigmas.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. Many are now obscure, but may have been an enigmatic exposition of the pravargya ritual.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), . . Rigveda 1.164.11 runs:
Devanagari
Latin transliteration
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.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), . .
Meanwhile, 1.164.48 gives:
Devanagari
Latin transliteration
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.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), . .
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?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; .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).
A later Indic example using a similar metaphor is from the riddles ascribed to Amir Khusrau (1253–1325):
Here the three hundred and fifty-five days of the year correspond to the twelve lunar cycles of the Islamic calendar year.Amir Khusro: The Man in Riddles, ed. and trans. by Ankit Chadha (Gurgaon: Penguin, 2016), notes.
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'.Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), pp. 412-21 (quoting p. 416). The tree is also the metaphor usually found in Arabic folktales.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]. 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.Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 412.
Most year-riddles of this kind can be thought of as containing some or all of the following components:Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 413 (citing Sigismund Szendrey, Ethnographia, 32 (1921), 71-73). +codecomponentalternative componentsolutionAthe treeyearBtwelve branchesmonthsCfifty-two flowersfour nestsweeks/seasonsD365 or 366 leavesseven eggsdays of year/weekEthree or six eggsChristmas, Easter, and Pentecost (one or two days each)Ftwenty-four young birdshoursGtheir sixty stepsminutes Versions containing only parts of the tree occur across Eurasia, whereas the versions with the nests occur only in Europe.Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 413.
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?.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].
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.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].
Later examples include:
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]Cited by Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (p. 132). A tree with twelve branches and thirty leaves, of which fifteen are black and fifteen white, strewn with open flowers of whitish yellow [Malay]Cited by Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (p. 132). 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]Cited by Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (p. 132). 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: ('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').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.
Animals 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.Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 370. 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:
Another example of the family metaphor is this French riddle, first published in 1811:
The only English-language example of this kind of year-riddle found by Taylor was from Saba Island in the Antilles: ''. — 'Twelve months of the year, de second one February'.Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 373.
Other animals