OBJECTS OF RELIGIOUS CEREMONIAL 181 



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

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

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

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

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

 Kafir, infidel. 



ZOROASTER (AVK3TA, ZARATHUSHTRA; PAHLAVI TEXTS, ZARTUSHT; MODERN PERSIAN, ZARDUSHT) 



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

 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 

 the north, and the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean in the south, 

 surrounded on all sides by high mountain ranges, with a great salt 

 desert in the center. 



There are few authentic data about Zoroaster and his life. Con- 

 cerning the age in which he lived there is wide diversity. Greek 

 writers assigned him dates ranging between 6,500 B. C. and 200 

 B. C, while some native sources and many modern scholars place him 

 in the seventh century B. C. But the fact that by the sixth century 

 B. C. Zoroastrianism had taken root in Persia, where it did not 

 originate, as evidenced from the Behistun inscription of Darius 

 Hystaspis (521-485 B. C), which show him a worshiper of Ahura- 

 Mazda, the supreme god of the Zoroastrian faith, and that it was 

 well known to the classical authors from the sixth century on as the 

 established religion at least of Media, would seem to accord best with 

 the date of about 1000 B. C, assumed by some scholars. The ques- 

 tion of the birthplace of Zoroaster is also a subject of dispute, but 

 western Iran, probably Atropatene, the mountainous district of 

 ancient Media, corresponding nearly to the modern Province of 

 Azerbaijan in Persia, is commonly believed to be the region in which 

 he arose. Tradition is quite in accord that Bactria in Eastern Iran, 

 about the modern district of Balkh in Afghanistan, was the stage of 

 Zoroaster's life and work. 



Legend made of Zoroaster, as of other great religious teachers, a 

 glorified and supernatural man. He was born in a miraculous way 

 by immaculate conception, his soul having been kept in the sacred 

 Haoma plant, till God's glory had purified his mother's body. At 

 his birth all creation laughed with joy, while the evil demons fled 

 aghast. When grown he was conducted b}^ an archangel into the 

 presence of God and in glory unutterable received divine revelations. 



»3 James Hastings, Encylopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 9, p. 641. 



