“Perspective on Parsis”

Seeing that Parsiana is amply distributed internationally, and that our mythical and authentic history is taught and taken more seriously than it apparently is in Bombay, I offer a couple of up-front correctives to your report on the Frohar Foundation’s April exhibition titled "Perspective on Parsis” (Parsiana, July 21, 2008).

The pseudo-historical Pesh-dadian dynasty cannot possibly be Zoroastrian because its very name means "before the religion/law (of Zoroaster).”

Your beautiful cover depicts a gilded copy of a world-famous relief of Darius I as that of King Jamsheed. The historical warrior-administrator would be most unhappy at being called an expansionist cattle baron. You’ve also just upset the greatest Mazdayasnian monarch of all time!

Our Post-dadian dynasties in Bombay and overseas will not forgive two anachronisms in the same issue.

Perform two penances therefore, and smile as you’re doing them!

FARROKH VAJIFDAR

London, UK

f.vajifdar@btinternet.com

The editors’ reply

We realized the resemblance of the painting to that of the stone engraving of Darius and so enquired with the organizers. They in turn asked us to speak to Ervad (Dr) Ramiyar Karanjia who said that this was an artist’s rendition of King Jamsheed. There being nothing else to go by, the artist had obviously worked along the lines of Darius’ image. Since there were some dissimilarities between the two images we went ahead and used the picture. In retrospect we could have added a line on the contents page mentioning the similarity to Darius.