5 Comments

  1. Maneck Bhujwala

    I enjoyed reading the article, but I have to point out one common misconception mentioned here. Parsis do not “worship the Fire God” as the author states. We praise all the great creations – Sun, Moon, Fire, Water, Earth, Air, etc. for each of which we have short prayers of praise for their roles in maintaining life on this planet, and even then, each of these short prayers of praise start with the name of the One God Parsis or Zarathushtis (Zoroastrians) worship, Ahuramazda or Wise Lord.

    Parsis worship Ahuramazda, the unseen supreme all good, perfect, and unseen Creator, facing a source of Light, which can be the Sun or Moon when we are outside in nature, or it can be a wood or gas fire in a temple, or it can be a candle or electric light inside a residence. Just as we do not call Muslims as worshippers of the Stone God because they face the black stone building, Kaabaa, in Mecca, and we do not call Christians worshippers of the Cross God, so also we cannot call Parsis as worshippers of the Fire God. It is understandable that some Hindus who call each element of nature as ‘Dev’ or ‘Devi’ meaning god or goddess, may make the mistake of using that understanding for Parsis.

    Another misconception is about when Prophet Zarathushtra founded his monotheistic, revealed religion. It was not ” founded 6th century BC”, as the author states, but some time approximately more than 4,500 years ago, when the language of AVESTA (as sister language of Vedic Sanskrit) was spoken and used by Zarathushtra to compose his poetic teachings called GATHAS. In 6th century B.C. when the first Persian empire was established by Zoroastrian king, Cyrus the Great, the religion of Zarathushtra became famous as the majority religion of the Persian empires and rulers, at which time the language was Old Persian (very different from AVESTA).

  2. Taniya Kundu

    Wow, the photographs are wonderful and it is a very informative piece…I agree with you that acculturation is the beauty of our country…the sheer diversity of the populace…I hope to see more posts on different cultures, religion and people…the more we explore, the more we grow…thanx Bro, for such a lovely post… 🙂 🙂

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