A look at the possible origins of the Kush-e Pildandān narratives

KushNameh is a heroic poem and its subject is the adventure of an anti-hero called Kush-e Pildandān, which spent most of his life fighting the children of Jamshid and the Iranian heroes. In addition to KushNameh, other Iranian heroic texts also contain numerous narratives about the Pildandān, which often differ from that of the poem, especially that in this category of sources, there are numerous stories about the end of his life and how he was killed. One of the ambiguous points about KushNameh, and especially its hero, is the origin of the narratives that are often disagreed among scholars, and scholars have stated hypotheses such as the connection of Kush stories to the Koshan kings or, his Sam strips. In this paper, first, the stories of the Kush-e Pildandān in the Iranian heroic literature are examined and several theories about the story are addressed, and then evidence about the possible origin of the anti-hero narrative are provided.