Multicolored World

Οι φωτογραφίες είναι δικές μου, από την καταπληκτική έκθεση που ξεκίνησε πριν λίγες μέρες στο Μουσείο Κυκλαδικής Τέχνης.

(https://www.cycladic.gr/)

Το κείμενο είναι από το βιβλίο της Mitra Sharafi, "Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia. Parsi Legal Culture, 1771-1947", Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 16-17.

"Zoroastrianism was the state religion of three dynasties that ruled over the ancient Persian empire: the Achaemenids (550-330 BCE), the Atsacids or Parthians (247 BCE-224 CE) and the Sasanians (224-651 CE). Between the first and second dynasties came conquest by Alexander of Macedon, known among Zoroastrians as Alexander the Destroyer, around 330 BCE. In the seventh century CE, the spread of Islam through Asia ended Sasanian rule. Arab Muslim invaders took advantage of in-fighting within the Persian Empire and effectively defeated the Sasanians during the period between 628 and 642 CE.

A huge part of the corpus of Zoroastrian scriptures - as much as 75 percent of Avestan texts - was lost or destroyed following the two invasions of Alexander and the Muslims. In the tenth century, a group of Zoroastrians migrated from Persia to western India. Others followed, particularly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, during the late Abbasid rulers' persecution of Zoroastrians and the Mongol invasions of Persia. The movement of Zoroastrians to India was roughly coeval with the growing conversion of Persians to Islam, a gradual process that took place over centuries.

By the fourteenth century, Islam had become the dominant religion in Persia. In the Parsi tradition, the migration to India was a flight from religious persecution. According to archaeological evidence, there had been trade between Persia and Gujarat for centuries before. Zoroastrians may have come to western India in part because they were already familiar with the region through earlier commerce."