Pious Citizens

Pious Citizens PDF

Author: Monica M. Ringer

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2011-12-13

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0815650604

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In Pious Citizens, Ringer tells the story of a major intellectual revolution in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India and Iran, one that radically transformed the role of religion in society. At this time, key theological debates revolved around Zoroastrianism’s capacity to generate “progress” and “civilization.” Armed with both the destructive and creative capacities of historicism, reformers reevaluated their own religious tradition, molding Zoroastrian belief and practice according to contemporary ideas of rational religion and its potential to create pious citizens. Ringer demonstrates how rational and enlightened religion, characterized by social responsibility and the interiorization of piety, was understood as essential for the development of modern individuals, citizens, new public space, national identity, and secularism. She argues persuasively that reformers believed not only that social reform must be accompanied by religious reform but that it was in fact a product of religious reform. Pious Citizens offers new insights into the theological premises behind the promotion of secularism, the privatization of religion, and the development of new national identities. Ringer’s work also explores growing connections between the Iranian and Indian Zoroastrian communities and the revival of the ancient Persian past.

A State of Mixture

A State of Mixture PDF

Author: Richard E. Payne

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0520286197

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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. ÊThe 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 saintsÕ 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. Ê

Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism PDF

Author: Paula Hartz

Publisher: Infobase Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1438117809

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Traces the history and beliefs of Zoroastrianism and its followers determination through centuries of persecution and hardship into the present day. The Iranian and Indian Zoroastrian communities in which the religion has thrived without missionary efforts or vast numb numbers of believers is also explored.

The Bundahisn

The Bundahisn PDF

Author:

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0190879041

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""The Bundahišn, meaning primal or foundational creation, is the central Zoroastrian account of creation, cosmology, and eschatology, and one of the most important of the surviving testaments to Zoroastrian literature and pre-Islamic Iranian culture. Touching on geography, cosmogony, anthropology, zoology, astronomy, medicine, legend, and myth, the Bundahišn can be considered a concise compendium of Zoroastrian knowledge. The Bundahišn is well known in the field as an essential primary source for the study of ancient Iranian history, religions, literature, and languages. It is one of the most important texts composed in Zoroastrian Middle Persian, also known as Zoroastrian Book Pahlavi, in the centuries after the fall of the Sasanian Empire to the invading Arab and Islamic forces in the mid seventh century. The Bundahišn provides scholars with a particularly profitable window on Zoroastrianism's intellectual and religious history at a crucial transitional moment: centuries after the composition of the Avesta, the Zoroastrian sacred scriptures, and before the transformation of Zoroastrianism into a minority religion within Iran and adherents' dispersion throughout Central and South Asia. However, the Bundahišn is not only a scholarly tract. It is also a great work of literature in its own right, and ranks alongside the creation myths of other ancient traditions: Genesis, the Babylonian Emunah Elish, Hesiod's Theogony, and others. Informed by the latest research in Iranian Studies, this translation aims to bring to the fore the aesthetic quality, literary style, and complexity of this important work.""--

Reclaiming the Faravahar

Reclaiming the Faravahar PDF

Author: Navid Fozi

Publisher: Leiden University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789087282141

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"Reclaiming the Faravahar" is the first ethnographic study of contemporary Zoroastrians in Tehran. Examining hundreds of ritual performances, Navid Fozi shows how Zoroastrians define their identity and values in an area long marked by conflict between the Shia and Sunnis. He focuses on two main concerns for Zoroastrians: continuity with the past as evidenced by their claim to be the most authentic Iranians, as well as their attempts to stand apart from the dominant Shia. Fozi also provides a look at the challenges Zoroastrians have faced over the centuries while exploring how today s members are working to remain relevant in a tumultuous regional and global context. "

The Zoroastrian Myth of Migration from Iran and Settlement in the Indian Diaspora

The Zoroastrian Myth of Migration from Iran and Settlement in the Indian Diaspora PDF

Author: Alan Williams

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009-09-24

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9047430425

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The Qesse-ye Sanjān is the sole surviving account of the emigration of Zoroastrians from Iran to India to form the Parsi (‘Persian’) community. Written in Persian couplets in India in 1599 by a Zoroastrian priest, it is a work many know of, but few have actually read, let alone studied in depth. This book provides a romanised transcription from the oldest manuscripts, an elegant metrical translation, detailed commentary and, most importantly, a radical new theory of how such a text should be “read”, i.e. not as a historical chronical but as a charter of Zoroastrian identity, foundation myth and justification of the Parsi presence in India. The book fills a lacuna that has been acutely felt for a long time.

Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism

Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism PDF

Author: Mary Boyce

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1990-10-15

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780226069302

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"Boyce is a, perhaps the, world authority on Zoroastrianism. . . . Prefaced by a 27-page introduction, this anthology contains selections which offer a complete picture of Zoroastrian belief, worship and practice. There are historical texts from the sixth century B.C. onwards, and extracts from modern Zoroastrian writings representing traditionalism, occultism and reformist opinion. Anyone wishing to know more about this 'least well known of the world religions' should sample these selections."—The Methodist Church "Wide-ranging. . . . An indispensable one-volume collection of primary materials."—William R. Darrow, Religious Studies Review

From Zoroastrian Iran to Islam

From Zoroastrian Iran to Islam PDF

Author: Shaul Shaked

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13:

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This work deals with aspects of Zoroastrianism in Iran during the Sasanian period, including the important distinction made between notions of menog and getig, or the spiritual and material modes of existence, and the idea that Ahreman, the Evil Spirit, does not belong in the material world.

Exile and the Nation

Exile and the Nation PDF

Author: Afshin Marashi

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2020-06-08

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1477320792

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In the aftermath of the seventh-century Islamic conquest of Iran, Zoroastrians departed for India. Known as the Parsis, they slowly lost contact with their ancestral land until the nineteenth century, when steam-powered sea travel, the increased circulation of Zoroastrian-themed books, and the philanthropic efforts of Parsi benefactors sparked a new era of interaction between the two groups. Tracing the cultural and intellectual exchange between Iranian nationalists and the Parsi community during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Exile and the Nation shows how this interchange led to the collective reimagining of Parsi and Iranian national identity—and the influence of antiquity on modern Iranian nationalism, which previously rested solely on European forms of thought. Iranian nationalism, Afshin Marashi argues, was also the byproduct of the complex history resulting from the demise of the early modern Persianate cultural system, as well as one of the many cultural heterodoxies produced within the Indian Ocean world. Crossing the boundaries of numerous fields of study, this book reframes Iranian nationalism within the context of the connected, transnational, and global history of the modern era.