PARSES RELIGIOUS CEREMONIAL OBJECTS IN THE 

 UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM.^ 



By I. M. Casanowicz, 

 Assistant Curator, Division of Old ^VorUl Archeology, United States National 



Museum. 



INTRODUCTION. 



THE PABSEES. 



The Parsees are the descendants of the ancient Persians, who, at 

 the overthrow of their country by the Arabs in G41 A. D., remained 

 faithful to Zoroastrianism, which was, for centuries previous to the 

 Mohammedan conquest, the state and national religion of Persia. 

 They derive their name of Parsees from the province of Pars or 

 Fars, broadly employed for Persia in general. According to the 

 census of 1911 the number of Parsees in India, including Aden, the 

 Andaman Islands, and Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, China, and 

 Japan, amounted to 100,499, of whom 80,980 belonged to the Bombay 

 Presidency.2 About 10,000 are scattered in their former homeland of 

 Persia, mainly in Yezd and Kerman, where they are Imown by the 

 name of Gebers, Guebers, or Gabars, derived by some from the Arabic 

 Kafir, infidel. 



zoroaster (avesta, zarathushtea ; pahlavi texts, zartdsht ; modern persian, 

 zaeddsht). 



The religious beliefs and practices of the Parsees are based on the 

 teachings of Zoroaster, the Prophet of the ancient Iranians ; that is, 

 those Aryans who at an unknown early date separated from the Aryo- 

 Indians and spread from their old seats on the high plateau north 

 of the Hindu Kush westward into Media and Persia on the great 

 plateau between the plain of the Tigris in the west and the valley of 

 the Indus in the east, the Caspian Sea and the Turanian desert in 



lA brief description of part of tlie collection described in this paper appeared in the 

 American Anthropologist, new series, vol. 5,. 1003, pages 71-75, with 2 plates. Since 

 then additions have been made to the collection, and as the article in the American 

 Anthropologist is, moreover, not accessible to the general public, it was deemed feasible 

 to give here a description of the enlarged collection with a fuller exposition of the 

 religious tenets and rites of the Parsees. 



2 .James Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 9, p. 641. 



No. 2432-Proceedings U. S. National Museum. Vol. 61. Art. 1 1. 



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