demiurge of evil. Zoroastrianism was apparently the first religious tradition
to posit an eschatology (doctrine of end times) at which good would triumph
over evil, a resurrection of the dead would occur, human beings would have
the opportunity to become immortal, and a judgment bridge connecting
the cosmic mountain at the center of the world to paradise would have to
be crossed.
Zoroastrianism became the “state religion” of the Achaemenids (sixth
centuryBCE), and the Sasanids (224–637 CE). During the first of these
periods the scriptures emerged, including hymns used for the rituals
(yasnas), and the Ga ̄tha ̄s, poems ascribed to Zoroaster himself. These became
known as the Avestaby the sixth century CE. By the time of the Sasanids, a
greater degree of mythologization had developed – e.g., time was divided
into mythological segments – and a ritual life had flourished. These rituals
included the practice of six major festivals, the use of fire temples serving
as microcosms in which the sacred fire could be maintained, and the use of
dachmas(“towers of silence”) in the disposal of the dead. Because earth, fire,
and water were sacred, these could not be used for disposal of the dead;
rather, the dead were to be exposed so that birds of prey could convey the
deceased symbolically to the upper reaches of the cosmos.
When Islam spread into Persia in the seventh century, Zoroastrians began
to migrate into India to the area now known as Gujarat. While some
Zoroastrians remained in Iran, where even today there are some 140,000,
most of them eventually settled in Gujarat, between 651 and 963 CE. A local
king was hospitable to the migrants, and, in due course, the community
adapted the language and dress of Gujarat. They lived amicably with their
new neighbors while retaining many of the religious traditions brought from
Iran, thanks to those priests who had settled with them.^10
In 1469, the community moved to another part of Gujarat, but by
the nineteenth century had, for the most part, migrated into Mumbai. There
the Pa ̄rsı ̄s (as they came to be called in India) experienced a renaissance
as the result of several factors.^11 Not least important, Elphinstone College
was founded by the British East India Company in 1827 to teach “the lan-
guages, literature, sciences, and moral philosophy of Europe.” Many Pa ̄rsı ̄s
attended here and studied Zoroastrian scriptures and religion, often through
the eyes of such seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European scholars as
Thomas HydeandA. Duperron. Meanwhile, the Scottish Presbyterian
missionary John Wilson, on the basis of his reading of Zoroastrian scriptures,
challenged a Pa ̄rsı ̄ leader in 1843 as being out of touch with the “scientific”
study of his own tradition. Other Western scholars offered varying views
on what was “authentic” Zoroastrianism. A German philologist, Martin
Haug, for example, teaching Sanskrit in Poona in the 1860s, argued on the
basis of the oldest scripture, the Ga ̄tha ̄s, that the religion should be a form
Streams from the “West” and their Aftermath 169