Zoroastrianism is the religion of ancient Iran, dating back over a thousand years before the time of Christ. It is also the religion of Britain's oldest South Asian minority, with a history going back to 1724. From the contribution of the Zoroastrian MPs Naoroji and Bhownagree in the nineteenth century to the transmission of their heritage and concerns today, this is the first complete study of the community right up to the 1990s. With the largest Zoroastrian population outside the 'old countries' living in London, the British community has played an important part in the modern history of Zoroastrianism. They furnish a unique opportunity to trace the history and experience of an Asian community in the West for well over a hundred years, with a wide variety of members from rural and urban India, Pakistan, East Africa, as well as the original homeland, Iran, and a substantial proportion of Zoroastrians who are British-born. The book is based on extensive study of archival sources, a large survey questionnaire, a programme of structured interviews, and over twenty years of the author's personal contact with the community. The book includes discussion of many important contemporary issues, such as racial prejudice, gender issues, generational differences, attitudes both to British society and to the 'old country' - and argues that religion is an increasingly important concern among British South Asian minorities.

Focusing on the Avestan and Pahlavi versions of the Sih-rozag, a text worshipping Zoroastrian divine entities, this book explores the spiritual principles and physical realities associated with them. Introducing the book is an overview of the structural, linguistic and historico-religious elements of the Avestan Sih-rozag. This overview, as well as reconstructing its approximate chronology, helps in understanding the original ritual function of the text and its relationship to the other Avestan texts.The book then studies the translation of the text in the Middle Persian language, Pahlavi, which was produced several centuries after its initial composition, when Avestan was no longer understood by the majority of the Zoroastrian community. Addressing the lacuna in literature examining an erstwhile neglected Zoroastrian text, The Sih-Rozag in Zoroastrianism includes a detailed commentary and an English translation of both the Avestan and Pahlavi version of the Sih-rozag and will be of interest to researchers and scholars of Iranian Studies, Religion, and History.

A new translation of the foundation texts of the Zoroastrian religion, the Gathas (songs) composed by Zoraster himself, together with the Liturgy in seven chapters composed shortly after his death some 2600 years ago. After a substantial introduction to Zoroaster's religious thought, West presents the translations with facing page explanations of the meaning of each verse.

This introduction to Zoroastrianism presents it as a living faith, with a coherent theology and an ethic of good thoughts, good words and good deeds. The text also contains a glossary of Zoroastrian terms.

Zarathushtra's Gathas & the Old Avestan canon are the central texts of Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest continuously practiced religions in the world that has had a vast influence on the development of many other religions, philosophies, global ethics and more. Composed more than 3000 years ago, they remain surprisingly evergreen in their relevance. With this new and innovative translation, Pablo Vazquez, a Zoroastrian scholar and convert, sheds new light on these sacred texts of eternal wisdom in a way that makes them accessible to a modern audience.

The edited volume Cyrus the Great: Life and Lore re-contextualizes Cyrus's foundational act and epoch in light of recent scholarship, while examining his later reception in antiquity and beyond. Among the many themes addressed in the volume are: the complex dossier of Elamo-Persian acculturation; the Mesopotamian antecedents of Cyrus's edict and religious policy; Cyrus's Baupolitik at Pasargadae, and the idiosyncratic genesis of Persian imperial art; the Babylonian exile, the Bible, and the First Return; Cyrus's exalted but conflicted image in the later Greco-Roman world; his reception and programmatic function in genealogical constructs of the Hellenistic and Arsacid periods; and finally Cyrus's conspicuous and enigmatic evanescence in the Sasanian and Muslim traditions. The sum of these wide-ranging contributions assembled in one volume, as well as a new critical edition and English translation of the Cyrus Cylinder, allow for a more adequate evaluation of Cyrus's impact on his own age, as well as his imprint on posterity.

Zoroastrianism is one of the world's great ancient religions. In present-day Iran, significant communities of Zoroastrians (who take their name from the founder of the faith, the remarkable religious reformer Zoroaster) still practise the rituals and teach the moral precepts that once undergirded the officially state-sanctioned faith of the mighty Sasanian empire. Beyond Iran, the Zoroastrian disapora is significant especially in India, where the Gujarati-speaking community of emigrants from post-Sasanian Iran call themselves 'Parsis'. But there are also significant Zoroastrian communities to be found elsewhere, such as in the USA, Britain and Canada, where western cultural contexts have shaped the religion in intriguing ways and directions. This new, thorough and wide-ranging introduction will appeal to anyone interested in discovering more about the faith that bequeathed the contrasting words 'Magi' and 'magic', and whose adherents still live according to the code of 'Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds.' The central Zoroastrian concept that human beings are continually faced with a choice between the path of 'good' and 'evil', represented by the contrasting figures of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, inspired thinkers as diverse as Voltaire, Mozart and Nietzsche. Jenny Rose shows why Zoroastrianism remains one of the world's most inspiring and perennially fascinating systems of ethics and belief.

Key Concepts in Eastern Philosophy provides an extensive glossary of the main terms and concepts used in Eastern philosophy. The book includes definitions of philosophical ideas linked to the national traditions of:

* Persia
* India
* Islamic world
* China
* Japan
* Tibet

including concepts from:

* Zoroastrianism
* Hinduism
* Sufism
* Islam
* Confucianism
* Shintoism
* Taoism
* Buddhism

Each entry includes a guide for further reading and critical analysis, is cross-referenced with associated concepts and is in easy-to-use A-Z format.

This book, first published in German in 2005, offers a compact, concise and accessible survey of Zoroastrianism. This tiny religious community traces its root to Zarathustra who lived some 2,500-3,500 years ago. Chapters address Zarathustra and the origins of the religion, religious concepts and narratives, ethics and gender, priesthoods and rituals, transitions and festivals. A postscript by Anders Hultgard, one of the leading experts on this field, discusses the influences of Zoroastrianism on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

This obscure and ancient religion is receiving more and more attention in modern times due to its claimed influence by scholars upon Christianity. This particular author, however, focuses upon the relationship between Zoroastrianism and Judaism, as he sets out to prove that Christianity did in fact receive influence from Zoroastrianism, but that it was transmitted through Judaism. This route of transmission allows the author to clearly show how Judaism itself was directly affected by Zoroastrainism during the Exilic Period, a time when these two faiths were existing in close proximity to one another. Chapters include Zoroaster Himself, The Mission and Ministry of the Prophet, The Scriptures of Zoroastrianism, Doctrine of God, Doctrine of Man, and Developments and Contacts.

Long before the first Hebrew temple, before the birth of Christ or the mission of Muhammad, there lived in Persia a prophet to whom we owe the ideas of a single god, the cosmic struggle between good and evil, and the Apocalypse. His name was Zarathustra, and his teachings eventually held sway from the Indus to the Nile and spread as far as Britain.
Following Zarathustra' s elusive trail back through time and across the Islamic, Christian, and Jewish worlds, Paul Kriwaczek uncovers his legacy at a wedding ceremony in present-day Central Asia, in the Cathar heresy of medieval France, and among the mystery cults of the Roman empire. He explores pre-Muslim Iran and Central Asia, ultimately bringing us face to face with the prophet himself, a teacher whose radical humility shocked and challenged his age, and whose teachings have had an enduring effect on Western thought. The result is a tour de force of travel and historical inquiry by an adventurer in the classic tradition.

Christian communities flourished during late antiquity in a Zoroastrian political system, known as the Iranian Empire, that integrated culturally and geographically disparate territories from Arabia to Afghanistan into its institutions and networks. Whereas previous studies have regarded Christians as marginal, insular, and often persecuted participants in this empire, Richard Payne demonstrates their integration into elite networks, adoption of Iranian political practices and imaginaries, and participation in imperial institutions. The rise of Christianity in Iran depended on the Zoroastrian theory and practice of hierarchical, differentiated inclusion, according to which Christians, Jews, and others occupied legitimate places in Iranian political culture in positions subordinate to the imperial religion. Christians, for their part, positioned themselves in a political culture not of their own making, with recourse to their own ideological and institutional resources, ranging from the writing of saints' lives to the judicial arbitration of bishops. In placing the social history of East Syrian Christians at the center of the Iranian imperial story, A State of Mixture helps explain the endurance of a culturally diverse empire across four centuries.

Hakon Naasen Tandberg explores how, when, and why humans relate to the non-human world. Based on two ethnographic fieldworks among the Parsis in Mumbai, the research focuses on the role of temple fires in the lives of present-day Parsi Zoroastrians in India as an empirical case. Through four ethnographic portraits, the reader will get a deeper look into the lives of four Parsi individuals, and how their individual biographies, personalities, and interhuman relationships, along with religious identities and roles, shape -- and to a certain extent are shaped by -- their personal relationships with non-human entities. The book combines affordance theory, exchange theory, and social support to analyse such relationships, and offers suggestive evidence that relationships with non-human entities -- in this case the Zoroastrian temple fires -- can be experienced as no less real, important, or meaningful than those with other human beings. The book also provides evidence not only that non-human entities such as the temple fires must be considered relational entities analogous to humans, but also that the kind of support provided by the fires and their availability in providing it is experienced as comparable -- and in some cases, superior -- to support received from human peers. The findings demonstrate that future approaches to religion as a social phenomenon will benefit from moving beyond mere interaction to exploring how and when engagement with religious entities can lead to long-term and emotionally satisfying personal relationships, thus paving the way for a more nuanced and relevant theory of religion as something interwoven into people's everyday lives.