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In contrast to the traditional rhetorical view of aesthetic metaphor, which is a purely linguistic phenomenon, Linguists such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson consider metaphor to be perceptual and conceptual in nature. This view of metaphor falls within the framework of cognitive semantics, in which meaning is based on conceptual constructs and, like other cognitive domains, represents subjective categories. The present study uses a descriptive-analytical approach to analyze conceptual metaphors and pictorial schemas in proverbs. Love, life, science, disability, humiliation, worldliness, and modesty are among the mappings of positive and negative concepts in conceptual metaphors in proverbs derived from literary texts. Among these, “water” and “fire” are words that have been used in Persian proverbs and the divans of poets and prose of former and contemporary writers to indicate the material and spiritual realms.The findings of this research indicate that the main mapping in the metaphorical sense of the proverbs based on the word “fire” is destructive, which is repeated with a frequency of 42 times.The main mapping in the conceptual metaphor of proverbs based on the word “water” is in the form of a spatial scheme (displacement) that is repeated 18 times. This highlights the central mapping of the word “water” and its rotation and instability. In general, by borrowing these mappings, poets and writers have created themes that always keep the listener enthusiastic and have contributed to the promotion of proverbs.
 

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Kalila and Dimnah is one of the common literary and cultural works of India and Iran and many of its contents were written based on the Aryan thought of these two peoples. In the present article, the issue of social stratification in the chapters “The Lion and the Bull” and “Investigation of the Conduct of Dimnah” has been analyzed with a mytho-sociological approach and with a descriptive-analytical method. The mytho-sociological analysis is a method that can reveal the mythological roots of some sociological concepts. The ideas of Georges Dumézil show that classification among Indo-European peoples was one of the main structures of creating social order. Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore also hold such beliefs in their sociological studies. The analysis of the aforementioned chapters of Kalila and Dimnah with these two mythological and sociological theories shows that the structure of the story of “The Lion and the Bull” is consistent with the class structure of Indo-European societies; a class structure that does not tolerate class mobility in any way and as it is clear in the “Investigation of the Conduct of Dimnah” chapter, those who engage in class mobility will have no end but destitution and destruction. In the studied chapters, Dimnah is the agent of failed class mobility, Kalila is the defender and acceptor of stratification as an undeniable reality; and the lion, lion’s mother, and the panther, who belong to the elite class, are the protectors and maintainers of stratification as a regulatory structure. The stratification in these chapters is another form of the mythical tripartite functions of Indo-European societies, which itself has become the cause of the formation of social classes in these societies.