Our own religion in ancient Persia: Dadabhai Naoroji and Orientalist scholarship on Zoroastrianism (original) (raw)
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Reform Transplanted: Parsi Agents of Change amongst Zoroastrians in Nineteenth-Century Iran
In the mid-nineteenth century, Parsis reestablished ties with Zoroastrians in Iran that had languished due to decades-long internal unrest in Iran. In 1854 reformists in India established the Society for the Amelioration of Conditions in Iran and sent a representative to Iran- Maneckji Hataria. Hataria was charged with eliminating the onerous non-Muslim tax owed by the Zoroastrians ( the jaziyeh). Hataria also organized the Iranian Zoroastrian community, and funded a variety of community projects. He also brought Parsi reformist ideas to Iran, and attempted to reshape Iranian religious practice and belief along Parsi lines. This article explores the effects of Parsi reformist ideas on Iran, and Hataria's own writings concerning Zoroastrianism and its relationship to Iranian national identity.
Orient, Vol. 37, 2002
In my previous papers, I demonstrated how Zoroastrianism changed drastically after the rise of the Safavid and Mughal Empires. I have indeed made clear the substance of change in the following three points; (1) Until the 16th century, Zoroastrian priests split into three groups: according to my classification based on the geographical location the Yazd-Kermanian group, the Gujaratian group and the Shirazian group; (2) Among them, the Shirazian Zoroastrians might take over the legacy of Nuqtavī-influenced Messianism and Kubrawī-influenced Mysticism ; and (3) the leader of the Shirazian Zoroastrians Azar Kayvan had necessarily read Sufi writings but considered himself the true successor to ancient Zoroastrianism. But the cause (s) of these changes still remain unsettled. In this paper, I will deal with a main cause. It is difficult to explain these drastic changes of modern Zoroastrianism without supposing any outside stimulus, and this view should lead us to think that some political or social affairs played important role in establishing the new phase in the history of Zoroastrianism. If we are to seek political affairs relative to Zoroastrian community in Iran and India, we will find the enthronement of Akbar in Mughal India and its serious impact on Zoroastrian messianism. In this connection, I will attempt to show that there are many inherent incentives in Zoroastrian messianism after the downfall of the Sasanian dynasty until the 16th century, and Akbar's enthronement functions as a last stimulus for Zoroastrian messianism to take on a new aspect. This transformation, in its turn, has influence on the other thoughts of the Shirazian Zoroastrians, and indication of such facts justifies my assumption. Having said above, I conclude that the transformation of Zoroastrian messianism in Mughal India may be the main cause of the drastic changes in modern Zoroastrianism.
Iranian Culture and South Asia, 1500-1900
Iran and the Surrounding Wolrd, eds. Nikki R. Keddie and Rudi Matthee, 2002
This chapter treats the Persian cultural influences on India and interactions between India and Iran in the centuries from 1500 to 1900. It surveys the place of the Persian languag e in Indian government, chancery practice, and imperial decrees, and the manner in which state adoption of it created a very large class of Persian-speaking bureaucrats, scribes, translators, and other intellectuals in the subcontinent. It is argued that in theM ughal period perhaps seven times as many readers of Persian lived in India as in Iran. The chapter looks at Indo-Persian travel writing, works on comparative religion, and the impact of religious groups with strong ties to Persian-speaking Iran, whether Twelver Shi 'is or the much smaller Isma ' iii and Zoroastrian communities. It pays special attention to the Shi 'i-ruled kingdoms that were , common in India in the early modern period.
CRITICAL STUDY OF ZOROASTRIANISM WITH REFERENCE TO INDIAN PARSIS
International Journal of Information, Library & Society, 2018
Zoroastrianism is rather a scientific and rational explanation of existence, of reality as a whole, of man's place in it, his duties while in this life and the high destiny which he can achieve by establishing his conduct in accordance with the eternal and immutable law of Nature which Zarathustra called the Law of Asha. Zoroastrianism is one of the world's oldest extant religions, "combining a cosmogonist dualism and eschatological monotheism in a manner unique among the major religions of the world". In this paper Zoroastrianism with special reference to Parsis in India is described.
Maneckji Nusservanji Dhalla, History of Zoroastrianism [1938]
Oxford, 1938
BIBLIOGRAPHY Aerpatastan. Translated from the Avesta-Pahlavi texts by S.J. Bulsara. Bombay, 1915. Andarz-i Atarpat-i Maraspand. The Pahlavi text, edited and translated by Peshutan Dastur Behramji Sanjana. Bombay, 1885. Andarz-i-Khusro-i-Kavatan. Bartholomae, Christian.
Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 2010
Early nationalist thought in nineteenth-century Iran emphasised the lost glories of the Zoroastrian pre-Islamic past, which it held for a utopian society of refinement, progress, and power destroyed by the advent of Islam. This article aims to show the prominence of this archaistic movement in the early phase of Iranian nationalism by highlighting the impact of an Indian Parsi traveller named Manekji Limji Hataria on nationalist intellectuals. Because of his religious background as a Zoroastrian, Manekji came to be perceived as an emissary of Iran's Golden Age. Fully aware of the potential influence this perception granted him, Manekji endeavoured to disseminate neo-Zoroastrian, pre-Islamic-centred, and frankly anti-Arab/anti-Islamic readings of history among intellectuals, and thus succeeded in having a disproportionate influence on the nationalist definition of Iranian history and identity.