Est. 1964 · Mumbai1964 – 2025 · every issue, digitised
Parsiana
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Readers' Forum

Errors in prayer books

One really wonders how authentic our prayer books are. I have seen two prayer books, published by different publishing houses, each giving vastly different meanings for the same prayer.
If a devotee prays from one book he praises God and thanks Him a million times for letting him be born in the Zoroastrian faith. If he prays from the other, he praises God a million times for giving him birth away from the religion of Zarathushtra! This contradiction has occurred as the word ‘dar’ (in) has appeared as ‘dur’ (away) in the second book which has gone into several editions with thousands of copies during the past 50 years. The error which crept into the first edition remained uncorrected in subsequent ones.
Priests, scholars or both should come forward to guide devotees in the matter of prayers and establish the authenticity of prayer books.
Several historians have claimed that both Alexander and the Arabs had destroyed anything and everything found in the Avesta language. Historians note that subsequently an attempt was made to restructure the lost literature, which was reasonably successful.
Taking a cue from this, can we not do likewise to guide devotees to recite prayers without flaws and in the correct manner? This can be achieved if any priestly body, with the help of scholars, takes up the task of examining the several prayer books now available in the market and guiding the devotees regarding which ones are authentic. Persian is a language of dots. If a dot is placed below a particular alphabet instead of on top of that letter the word changes altogether.
RATAN J. DAMANWALA

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