USHTA VOL. XXIV NO.2 JUNE, 2003

Ours is a community constantly in search of heroes, but it is a search mired in the ignorance of our history, coupled with a lack of literary vis-ibility and a fatalistic determination to make heroes of those who least deserve the accolade. The result ofthis is that our children are growing up without Zoroastrian role models, whose lives and works would, to cliche John F. Kennedy, be 'profiles in courage'.

If you speak to a Muslim teenager he will cite as his hero Saladin the Kurd who wrested the holy city of Jerusalem frorn the Franks, For the Christians it would be Richard the Lion Heart or even St. Augustine, as the epitome of Christian thought. To the Jews it would be Moses, who led them from the wildemess and in more recent times, Ben Gurion who made the state of Israel possible. For the Buddhists there is the

Dalai Lama. and the great Lamas ol the past.

However, for generations of Zoroastrians, there have been no heroes acknowledged and acclaimed, universally. This is because for us there is no testimony of the great ones in our collective consciousness. There is no testimony that is taught and affirmed in the minds of our youth. Today, there is no pageantry of l-ristory or tale of courage and glory that captures the hearts of our young and there is no religious act which enhances their souls. We are a lost people without heroes and without miracles awaiting the Saviour- Saoshyant. We are bringing up generations of children whose minds, irearts and souls are rooted neither in the historical, nor the religious icons of our comrnunity.

Across the board, Zoroastrian youth are more familiar with the antics of Michael Jackson, sports hero like Michael Jordan and Indian film stars Amitabh Bachhan

and Shahrukh Khan, than with any Zoroastrian heroic ideal. For the more serious, there is greater familiarity with Platonic thought, Descartes and the adventures ofAlexander and Napoleon, than the exploits of Cyrus the Great or the Sasanian

Kings, Ardeshir Papakan and Anoshirwan-i Adil. Parsi aficionados of music will extoll the virtues of an aria sung by minor opera singers in Milan than consider knowing anything about the Parthian minstreis of Iran or discover the musical tradition of the Parsis in India. A Zoroastrian wiil find it easier to quote from the Bhagwad Gita and the Bible than from the corpus of the Avesta. A Zoroastrian engineer will

be more familiar with the architectural and engineering wonders of the west than have any knowledge about Zoroastrian architectural innovations such as the Parthian dome or the "qanat" system of lran.

The lault lies not with the present generation or even earlier generations, it lies in the depths of a dark and deep whirlpool in our past. Most importantly, there is a total lack of literary visibility - for vcry little is written. We are rold that we

are poor chroniclers of fustory, being people of the olal tradition, this in turn, has made us deaf and mute spectators of history. Not only are our historical records of the Achaemenian, Parthian ancl Sasanian periods meagre, but in the afiermath of the devastation caused by the Arabs, we seem to have buried our history in the debris o1- the invasion. We have nothing... and know even less of the pericd betw,een the 7th and the i 3th centuries. We have allorved the post Arab history of Iran to be written by the invaders without a single refutation fiom our side. We have allowed the Islamic usurption of not just our history, but also of our art, architecture, literary works and scientific innovations.

Thus, it is not surprising that the Parthian dome is seen as an Islamic feature and incredulously the Shahname verses taken from the Khwaday Namag, the Sasanian Book of Kings is seen by millions of people as a book of the ancient kings of lslamic Iran. Nowhere in literary circles do they clearly say that the Shahname is a book of

Zoroastrian kings and is the epic history of Zoroastrian Iran.

It is unbelievable that having arrived in India, in the l0th century and despite not having suffered persecution, we have a dark period of history for nearly 300 years. till we hear'. that in the 13th century a Vadi Dar-i Mihr was built in Navsari in Gujarat. Again there are numerous lapses in our historical records and although we

have manuscripts from that period which attest to a thriving community - our history is blanked out and wiped clean from the annals of time.

Consequently, there is amnesia in the collective memory bank, until the 17th and 18th centuries when fragments of Parsi history began to emerge through the Persian Rivayats and the extant records. These are largely in terms of building activities and trade achievements. Napoleon said of the English that they were a nation of shop

keepers, perhaps at heart we are a nation of traders.

Zoroastrian history comes to the fore only with the wealth made in trading activities. Thus it is not surprising that those that we...

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