With special reference of Zoroastrians/Parsees development in Iran and India, particularly in Mumbai.

This Lavishly Ilustrated Volume Attempts To Span A Vast Period Of Time And Gives A Glimpse Of The Life And Times Of The Zoroastrian People In Iran And India As Manifested In Their Art, Religion And Culture.

For many centuries, from the birth of the religion late in the second millennium BC to its influence on the Achaemenids and later adoption in the third century AD as the state religion of the Sasanian Empire, it enjoyed imperial patronage and profoundly shaped the culture of antiquity. The Magi of the New Testament most probably were Zoroastrian priests from the Iranian world, while the enigmatic figure of Zarathushtra (or Zoroaster) himself has exerted continual fascination in the West, influencing creative artists as diverse as Voltaire, Nietzsche, Mozart and Yeats. This authoritative volume brings together internationally recognised scholars to explore Zoroastrianism in all its rich complexity. Examining key themes such as history and modernity, tradition and scripture, art and architecture and minority status and religious identity, it places the modern Zoroastrians of Iran, and the Parsis of India, in their proper contexts. The book extends and complements the coverage of its companion volume, The Everlasting Flame.

This is the first ever comprehensive English-language survey of Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest living religions Evenly divided into five thematic sections beginning with an introduction to Zoroaster/Zarathustra and concluding with the intersections of Zoroastrianism and other religions Reflects the global nature of Zoroastrian studies with contributions from 34 international authorities from 10 countries Presents Zoroastrianism as a cluster of dynamic historical and contextualized phenomena, reflecting the current trend to move away from textual essentialism in the study of religion

The significance of the Zoroastrian religion in the development of the history of thought is often only mentioned in passing, or is completely overlooked. Zoroastrianism has developed over a span of at least three thousand years, with roots in a common Indo-Iranian culture and mythology, then becoming part of imperial Iranian ideology within an Ancient Near Eastern setting, and emerging in variant forms in western and central Asia in late antiquity. The religion continues as a living faith for an estimated 130 - 150,000 adherents in the world. Most Zoroastrians if asked, 'In a nutshell, what do Zoroastrians believe?' would begin their answer with the moral maxim: 'Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds.' Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed takes this foundational trifold ethic as the framework for its three main chapters. The book presents a comprehensive study of the religion through its focus on the questions that perplexed seekers might ask of a Zoroastrian concerning ideology and ethics; current discussions of 'text' and 'author'; and the putting-into-practice of the religion.

Essays on Marxism and Asia begins with the largely forgotten prophet of ancient Iran Zarathushtra, remembered and immortalised by Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. In contrast to the infamous clash of civilisation thesis, this book argues for a humanist theory of civilisations and studies the Parsis or Persians who left Iran to settle in India and make it their home. It claims that Parsis, despite being a migrant community, took strength from their Persian heritage and civilisation and rose to become the architects of industrial modernity in India. This book locates this humanist theory in the larger genre of the Asiatic mode of production with caste as its sub- text. It then takes a phenomenological reading of caste in India and says that India is afflicted by a very strange illness called ‘silent blindness’ where humanity is silenced and blinded in front of the caste apparatus. It then analyzes how capitalism and modernity fashioned caste in the image of capitalism and how the Indian right- wing imagined its fascistic politics of race and racial superiority based on the image of caste hierarchy. The problem in India has been that the liberals could not take caste seriously so as to confront it and then annihilate this violent apartheid structure. This, the book argues, has led to the rise of fascism in India. The book concludes with positing two different strands of secularism, namely liberal or bourgeois secularism which merely separates religion and the state (but mixes these when required) and revolutionary secularism which humanises religion and politics first in order to find the human and class content in both. The chapters in this book were originally published in Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory.

Explores the problems for studying art and religion in Eurasia arising from ancestral, colonial and post-colonial biases in historiography.