Mind your language...

Ervad Sheriarji Dadabhoy Bharucha, the first student of K. R. Cama, and one who had a very distinguished career as a scholar — even sometimes differing with his mentor and guru, K. R. Cama, delivered in 1889 a lecture on prayers in which he said "the right way of praying to God was in the language that could be understood and not, as the orthodox would have it, only in the original words of the Avesta.”

He showed that "many of our prayers now extant are in different languages beginning with Zend, then Pazend, then Pahlavi, Persian, etc and that there were even some prayers written by Dasturs in India in old Gujarati.”

This was the hardest pill to swallow for Mansukh’s party (Mansukh was the pen name for Mancherji Cowasji Lang-dana. It appears in 1895 he had given a talk on "We Mazdiyasni people. In what language we are bound to offer our prayers”). They protested that the efficacy of our prayers lay in our adhering to the revealed words of the Avesta and its effect was not the less because the devotee understood not a word of what he muttered. The uproar caused by these prayer lectures resulted in an agitation against the Rahnoomai Sabha, but on the other side these lectures must have been instrumental in increasing the little band of intelligent reformers.

A definite plan was formed for organized advance on the lines laid down by Bharucha. The Ervad advocated not only that prayers should be understood but that they should be sung, Mansukh answered with vociferous accusations of heresy. "Why,” replied Bharucha, "your very Gathas are all poetry and they are to be sung.”

Your readers may be interested in going through the booklet — only 14 pages — on Bharucha written by his grandson Farrokh E. Bharucha.

Sheriarji appealed to Zoroastrians to go "back to the Gathas.” He urged the community to remember that "the Gathas were the only part of the Parsi scriptures which retained the form given to them by the Prophet himself and were untainted by additions from his disciples.”

Capt HORMAZDIAR J. M. DESAI