Religious Exiles and Emigrants: the Changing Face of Zoroastrianism
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University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 7-10-2008 Religious Exiles And Emigrants: The hC anging Face Of Zoroastrianism Tara Angelique Migliore University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Migliore, Tara Angelique, "Religious Exiles And Emigrants: The hC anging Face Of Zoroastrianism" (2008). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/407 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Religious Exiles And Emigrants: The Changing Face Of Zoroastrianism by Tara Angelique Migliore A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Religious Studies College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Danny L. Jorgensen, Ph.D. Paul G. Schneider, Ph.D. Dell Dechant, M.A. Date of Approval: July 10, 2008 Keywords: zarathushtra, parsi, bahdinan, diaspora, zoroaster © Copyright 2008 , Tara Angelique Migliore for SamEmma Thank you, Duband TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 01 CHAPTER TWO HISTORY OF THE FAITH AND ITS REDUCTION IN 06 NUMBERS A Brief History of the Faith and How It Has Changed Over Time 06 Zarathushtra and His Revelations According to Tradition 10 The Magi 17 Zoroastrians: The Bahdinan and the Parsis 21 The Bahdinan 21 The Parsis 25 CHAPTER THREE TENETS CAUSING DEBATE AND DISUNITY 31 Community Boundaries 32 Preservation of Traditions 36 The Demographic Problem 38 Conversion 40 CHAPTER FOUR SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES 45 Steve Bruce 47 Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz 51 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION 54 WORKS CITED 57 BIBLIOGRAPHY 58 i RELIGIOUS EXILES AND EMIGRANTS: THE CHANGING FACE OF ZOROASTRIANISM Tara Angelique Migliore ABSTRACT Zoroastrianism was founded by the prophet Zarathushtra ca 1400 to 1200 BCE and is generally acknowledged as the world’s oldest monotheistic and revealed religion. It dominated three great Iranian empires, and influenced Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mahayana Buddhism. At one point in time, their numbers surely seemed limitless. Today, however, roughly 150,000 Zoroastrians are scattered all over the globe in very small numbers. The faith is at a crossroads, and its very existence is threatened. This is an examination of the decline and subsequent change of this previously influential and vital religion. Zoroastrians have been able to maintain the major tenets of their practices and beliefs without much interruption for millennia. However, with more and more Zoroastrians moving into the global economy and the Western culture, secularization, modernity, and loss of an extensive, immediate community are causing new beliefs to be adopted and/or advanced by some of the faith. This shift in beliefs and ii values is causing disunity among members of the faith. Today Zoroastrian communities are on all inhabited continents and many different countries within those continents. This has forced the Zoroastrian communities worldwide into introspection, definition, and clarification. Contemporary Zoroastrians differ over how to keep their beloved faith alive and how to best remain true to its heritage and sustain its “purity.” There are currently two substantial efforts to maintain the identity of Zoroastrianism, characteristically reflecting an orthodox and a liberal approach. As criteria for evaluating the Zoroastrianism of modern day, I will utilize Steve Bruce’s discussions of secularizations and its effects on religions as reasons for the current changes of the Zoroastrian faith. I will also explore the meaning of ethnicity as related to religion as provided by Ebaugh and Chafetz for a prediction for the future of the faith. Zoroastrians worldwide must acknowledge the cultural differences that exist in their one faith—and the subsequent needs there of—if they are going to organize and map a course of survival. iii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Zoroastrianism appears to be on a path to extinction with an estimated membership of 150,000 or less in the world today. 1 Internal prohibitions against conversion and intermarriage with outsiders combined with low birth rates among members are reducing these numbers even further. With more and more Zoroastrians moving into the global economy and the Western hemisphere, secularization, modernity, and loss of an extensive, immediate community are causing new beliefs to be adopted and/or advanced by some of the faith. There are even some completely outside of the traditional faith who are adopting the teachings of Zarathushtra and claiming them as their own. This shift in beliefs and values is causing disunity among members of the faith. Because the Zoroastrians have been able to maintain the major tenets of their practices and beliefs without much interruption for millennia, the declining membership of Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest religions, is a matter of genuine scholarly interest. The purpose of this thesis is to explore reasons for the decline and change of this previously influential and vital religion. Zoroastrianism was founded by the prophet Zarathushtra—or Zoroaster as he is known in the West—ca 1400 to 1200 BCE, and it is generally acknowledged as the 1 Rashna Writer, Contemporary Zoroastrians: An Unstructured Nation (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1993), 245. 1 world’s oldest monotheistic and revealed, creedal religion.2 From the sixth century BCE to the seventh century CE it flourished and dominated in Persia, modern-day Iran, to include much of the Near and Middle East, became the state religion for three great Iranian empires, and influenced the development of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mahayana Buddhism.3 The traditional Zoroastrian communities were disrupted and dispersed with the rise and spread of Islam. In order to avoid persecution and oppression, many of the Zoroastrian population sought refuge in Bombay, India (now Mumbai), and subsequently it has been dispersed even further. Today Zoroastrian communities can be found on all inhabited continents and many different countries from the United States and Canada to East Africa, Hong Kong, and Australia. 4 Therefore, in the context of other nations’ more dominant religions and cultures (not to mention nationalities), Zoroastrianism can be stated to be in diaspora. This has forced the Zoroastrian communities worldwide into introspection, definition, and clarification. Contemporary Zoroastrians differ over how to keep their beloved faith alive and how to best remain true to its heritage and sustain its “purity.” There are currently two substantial efforts to maintain the identity of Zoroastrianism, characteristically reflecting an orthodox and a liberal approach. According to orthodox Zoroastrians, they believe that their religion was given to them as a race from the one true god, and that it was not meant for anyone else. They also believe that all religions are a path to righteousness; therefore, if everyone follows the 2 Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London: Routledge, 2001), xiii. 3 Ibid, 1. 4 John R. Hinnells, The Zoroastrian Diaspora: Religion and Migration. The Ratanbai Katrak Lectures, the Oriental Faculty, Oxford 1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 6. 2 good path of their inherited faith, they will go to Heaven. Consequently, there is no need to convert. Liberal Zoroastrians counter that after his revelation Zarathushtra himself began as a convert and that everyone had to be converted. Liberals also say that the anti- conversion tenet came about after the Islamic invasion (and many forced conversions) when Zoroastrians moved to Bombay and became such stellar citizens that the class- stricken and underprivileged of India were drawn to Zoroastrianism and wanted to convert. The Zoroastrians in Bombay were also seeing their children and grandchildren intermarrying with the citizens of India, and thus diluting their Persian bloodline. The sociology of religion provides two or more different ways of accounting for and understanding these divisions within Zoroastrianism and its likely consequences. Steve Bruce holds that secularization is a social condition manifest in the declining social significance of religion that causes a decline in the number of religious people and the extent to which people are religious.5 Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz maintain that religion is the central element in the maintenance of ethnic identity which subsequently becomes even more important when speaking of second and following immigrant generations. 6 My thesis examines the likely consequences of the current divisions within Zoroastrianism based on the sociological theorizing of Bruce and Ebaugh and Chafetz. Zoroastrianism has survived now for millennia, and looking back will help to not only understand a history of change, but also to predict an outcome of survival. As criteria for evaluating the Zoroastrianism of modern day, I will utilize Steve Bruce’s discussions of 5 Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 3. 6 Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz, eds., Religion and the New Immigrants: continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations