Shattering myths

Those among us fortunate to have seen and heard the Manchester University Prof Alan Williams’ enthralling recitation of the full Qisse-ye Sanjan (QyS) at a recent World Zoroastrian Organisation’s London seminar, simply cannot hope to recreate the dramatic atmosphere of that occasion. The Iranians present marvelled most at the good professor’s excellent Persian, and least at the 400-year-old saga — knowing it was their ancestors who throughout had kept the true flame alive in Iran. We Parsis thrilled afresh at hearing our "Foundation Charter” sonorously declaimed, with its militaristic wonders and woes.
After Williams’ QyS presentation and book promotion at the 2009 Oxford Ratanbai Katrak Lectures, he was asked about its setting and background. Dissatisfied with his response that he was not a historian of India, those questions remained suspended. What were these irksome queries? It has long been urged that a sevenfold path of enquiry be traced and followed up to obtain credibly satisfying solutions: who, what, where, who helped, why, how, when — one or more, if not all, should assist the serious enquirer.

To the ‘who’ on the QyS’s composer: the Sanjana priest Bahman Kaikobad Hormazdyar (BKH); the ‘where’ of its recording is undoubtedly Navsari; ‘who’ helped and ‘how’ are given out as the venerable Dastur Hoshang who recalled the traditional history for BKH; ‘when’ is dated firmly to 1599 CE. Responses to the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ entail complexities. Possible answers to these unasked items are offered here for examination, discussion and further investigation.
Priestly indolence, ignorance and intransigence are lapses that afflicted the Parsi prelates in western India since before the 15th century. Speaking of one united group of refugee settlers, the Sanjan Parsis had over the centuries spread out northwards and into the hinterland. They became distributed among the far-located five parishes or panthaks (after which they were classed), entailing considerable rancour through overlapping of priestly wards. Their sacerdotal terrain reached north from the Dantora to the Sabarmati rivers, the main practitioners being the Sanjana, Bhagaria (sharers), Godavra, Bharucha and Khambata clans. The symbolism of the "walking” mango tree which graces the cover of Williams’ worthy QyS tome, and cogently endorsed by the enthusiastic Parsi archaeologist Rukshana Nanji, weighs well with the explanation of their northerly expansion.
With increasing prosperity came larger families, ensconced within small-town mohallas and villages, and their requirement for permanent places of worship under the jurisdiction of heads of priestly clans. The Sanjanas and the Bhagarias were rarely in harmony, and intermittently at loggerheads. The Zoroastrian religion which everyone claimed to preserve had fallen between the powered jaws of regional economics and internal politics.
The erosion of Muslim control over Gujarat went to the gain of the majority Hindus, so much so that the Parsis themselves became indelibly Hinduized in everything from names to their customs and beliefs as confirmed by studies of medieval Parsi history. To their rescue came the Sanjan saga QyS with its pseudo-historical base and a circumlocutory account of Mazdayasna. Its composer had bemoaned the loss of religious identity among the 16th century Parsis, some 800 years after their Khorasani ancestors had made landfall around 716 CE (not 936!).
The 936 dating can be explained as a miswriting for 716. In any case, either date remains imprecise since the Qisse was assembled nearly 900 years after that particular group’s landfall. BKH got caught up in his own vague numbers.
He was hopeless at basic arithmetic, but never mind, for he spins a good yarn such that we can forget its historicity. Also, as a shrewd Sanjana priest, he manages to avoid mention of Neryosangh Dhaval, Nariman Hoshang, the Emperor Akbar and the first Dastur MeherjiRana. Iranian Mazdaeans had settled in the Iranian administered north-west Indian province since the times of Darius the Great – namely, around 500 BCE. Undoubtedly, earlier contacts with the major coexisting faiths in the lush setting of western India with their beguilingly mystical offshoots had largely contributed to the alarming dilution of the Gujarat Jarthosti religion. They contrasted sharply with the austere faith of the Iranian Zardushtis who resolutely maintained it within the isolation of the arid central and eastern reaches of their spiritual fatherland.
Yet there remain inconsistencies: BKH acknowledges indebtedness for his Sanjan tale to the recollections of a Dastur Hoshang who had reorganized the elements of the faith such that it became authoritative! Hoshang, "pious; wise .... knew Avesta and Zand — his word on religion was final, and he instructed all in the secrets of the religion.” Why then, if Hoshang’s authoritative version with its arcana (mystical or specialized knowledge) was known to his fellow-priests, was there not a secure preservation of the religion? Why instead does BKH lament that in his times (as also that of the aged Hoshang’s?) "the Lord alone knows what true religion is, for men do not!” Here was a tacit admission of priestly failure to inspire and instruct their pious congregations. It is small wonder that such ingrained laxity had allowed promiscuous beliefs and alien practices to make insidious inroads into a seriously weakened, disestablished Mazdayasna. What, till then, was "preserved?”
BKH obviously knew the elderly Hoshang, leaving clear recollection with the former of his wise teachings. When young, Hoshang in turn must also have known an ageing Changa Asa (1450-1512) who instigated the Rivayats (1478+), and supervised the Iranshah fire’s shift from Bansda to Navsari. (The Rivayats are the correspondence exchanged between the Zoroastrians in Iran and India.)
The dates of the Navsari davar Changa Asa could help reduce uncertainties — being instrumental in moving the sacred flame from its concealment at Bansda to Navsari, leaving 1490 as probable date, the earlier reckoned 1416 and later 1516 enthronement dates having become impossible. This notwithstanding, there is the thorny subject of suppressions, and the QyS’s abrupt termination at around 1500 CE without any mention of Changa Asa’s emissary Nariman Hoshang to Iran in 1478, leaving out 120 years of Rivayat exchanges.
Those ignored Rivayats, all addressed to Changa Asa, are dated to 1478, 1481, 1511. Further Rivayats, dated 1516, 1520, 1527, 1535 were addressed to the sons of Changa Asa and behdin leaders of Navsari. Either or both BKH and Hoshang must then have had knowledge of the contents of these exchanges and the worsening condition of their staunch Zardushti co-religionists in 16th century Iran.
Another absentee from the QyS is Dastur Meherji Rana (1514-1591), son of Rana Jesung, leader of the Bhagaria priestly faction, who had encountered the great Mughal Akbar firstly at Surat in 1573, and again in 1578. Literally the first Wazif-dar, he was elected high priest, or dastur, of the Navsari Bhagaria and Sanjana sects, for both of which he strove to equitably apportion ceremonial duties on a lastingly peaceable basis.
Was the pious Hoshang, BKH’s mentor, just neglectful or unaware of the contemporary history unfolding around him? Where is Neryosangh Dhaval in the QyS? Hoshang certainly knew Changa Asa, perhaps personally, for his selflessly devout activities. Why were the all-important early Rivayat exchanges ignored by him? They were, after all, in good 15th/16th century Persian! Did he disapprove of their content? Of the emissary? And if so, why? Was it opportune politicking on BKH’s (and Hoshang’s) part? Did the Sanjanas wish ascendancy over the Bhagarias? The times were not propitious for the success of either in-fighting priestly sects. There was resultant disillusionment with the priesthood among the Navsari behdins who forsook the Bhagaria clerics and for a while even performed their own ceremonies. Worse still, they each occasionally murdered the other — unbelievable, but sadly and horribly true!
For whom then was the QyS composed? The central and northern sub-continent had come under the sway of the Great Mughals who, whilst maintaining the Chagatai Turki of their Uzbegh homeland, conducted the affairs of court and commerce in Persian. The Parsis employed the vernacular form of Old Gujarati (written left-to-right under "washing-lines,” quite like Devnagari), whilst their educated priests had kept up the study of Persian with its right-to-left script which few of the laity could read or use among themselves.
BKH’s drafting of the QyS was aimed at assuring the Mughals and the 16th century Muslim governors of Gujarat of Parsi allegiance. An indication of BKH’s anxiety to placate his new masters by a verbose doxology (hymn glorifying God) is his adoption of the hyperbolic, abnegating style of Muslim preachers.
All the more ironic, then, that BKH lauds a probably non-existent petty Hindu busybody with his five trite demands on the storm-tossed refugees, whilst deliberately omitting mention of mediaeval India’s greatest emperor, the Mughal Akbar-e-Azam through whose goodwill and indulgence the Parsis were able to settle and prosper wherever they chose in his vast realm. Perhaps BKH had run out of sugar to sweeten the milk of Akbar’s human kindness?
There is, however, a forewarning to be sensed — a certain Khujastah (!) appears, delighting in ritualism and endless kriya liturgies. He was from a dastur family who in turn inspired other priests — a properly benign activity to which example today’s namesake behdin "teacher” could advantageously adhere.
Forced conversions of the religious minorities in Iran, "at sword-point,” did recommence under the 16th century Shi’a Safavids. At around the same period, Iranian mystics who had found acceptance at the courts of Akbar and Jehangir, made their way along the Indo-Gangetic plain where varieties of Sufiism were in vogue. Several Gujarat Parsis were attracted by the simplicity of outward worship of cults careful to place Zarathushtra among their admired hierophants (persons who interpret and explain esoteric mysteries).
In our own times the contrasting fashions for learning the truths of the Zoroastrian religion have proliferated — although irretrievably floundered on overblown, incomprehensibly concocted ritualism and ad hoc "traditions” — from multi-byte videotapes and the blogosphere, to say nothing of irresponsible book and pamphlet productions. Thus it was in keeping with current pseudo-religious double-speak to see and hear a Bombay Parsi Punchayet grandee infamously pontificating on the QyS’s "sixth condition” — one wholly bogus! — to not convert Hindu subjects to Mazdayasna, imposed upon the Khorasani religious refugees for settling within the domains of "King” (!) Jadi Rana. Furthermore, this childishly contrived falsehood of a non-existent condition was to be made binding upon all their descendants for all time — in shameful and utter contradiction to the ancient Iranian sage Zoroaster’s enjoining of all mankind’s conversion. Parsiism is now permanently hostage to the whims of Punchayet panjandrums (pompous or self-appointed officials) basing their fake authority not on Zarathushtra’s Gathas but on the say-so of an opportunist eighth century small-town headman who existed only in the fervid imagination of Bahman Kaikobad! The lie proliferates; the religion of truth deteriorates. Should we at all care?
It is comforting to know that the QyS concludes with another protracted doxology, but now ending in a respectably Zoroastrian form: "In recounting this tale, I have followed the path of truth! May Zarathushtra be praised!”

Farrokh Vajifdar was former vice president of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. An author and editor, he is an independent researcher into Ancient Indo-Iranian culture, history and religions.