Zoroastrianism

Avestan is the sacred language of the Avesta, Zoroastrianism's scripture, preserved liturgically long after it ceased to be spoken.

Zoroastrianism has deep regional roots, and the fire temple at Ateshgah near Baku survives as its best known monument.

The tradition's liturgical, scriptural or ancestral language belongs to this family.

The tradition's liturgical, scriptural or ancestral language belongs to this family.

Zoroastrianism was the established religion of the empire, with royal fire temples, a priestly hierarchy and the collation of the Avesta.

Holds the largest surviving Zoroastrian community in Iran, and the Atash Behram keeps a fire held to have burned without interruption for centuries.

Zoroastrianism ranks under Ahura Mazda the six Amesha Spentas, bounteous immortals each governing an aspect of creation, and the yazatas worthy of worship, an ordered hierarchy that scholars have long argued shaped later Jewish and Christian angelology.

Both the producing UNESCO assisted foundation's own page and Yale's Forum on Religion and Ecology name Asha, the Yasna and the Jashan ceremony outright as this film's subject, making this the first screen work the atlas holds for the tradition.

Historically general, now retained chiefly for priestly initiation among the Parsis.

The script of the Zoroastrian Middle Persian religious and literary corpus.

Zoroastrian practice tends the fire in a fire temple as a presence, never allowed to go out in the highest grade.

Clergy or specialist role within Zoroastrianism.

Zoroastrianism inverts the valence of the same two cognate terms, ahura and daeva.

Zoroastrian cosmology sets the fixed stars on the side of Ahura Mazda as an ordered army against the planets, which are treated as agents of the hostile spirit, an inversion of the Greek scheme in which the planets carry the meaning.

Its own text: invested with the sudreh at navjote, its threads read as the chapters of the Yasna.

Clergy or specialist role within Zoroastrianism.

A dramatized account of Zoroastrianism's history and its prophet, framed through a Parsi conductor's own exploration of his ancestral faith, whose central controversy is an argument within the tradition about the film's own portrayal of Zarathustra rather than an outside depiction of it.

The Saoshyant is the awaited saviour central to Zoroastrian eschatology.

A life size bronze statue of the prophet Zarathustra unveiled at MIT World Peace University in Pune with Zoroastrian College, its ceremony conducted by priests from two Mumbai fire temples.

Its own text: "worn by initiated Zoroastrians", invested with the kusti at the navjote.

Zoroastrian communities are governed by lay bodies such as the Parsi Punchayet rather than by clerical assemblies, and the priesthood is hereditary rather than synodal.

The Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe is constituted to advance the Zoroastrian religious faith and relieve poverty among Zoroastrians, so linked to Zoroastrianism at the religion level.

Sasanian Persia was a major channel by which Greek and Indian astrology were transmitted, and Zoroastrian cosmology absorbed the planets, though it ranked them as agents of the hostile spirit set against the ordered army of the fixed stars.

The World Zoroastrian Organisation is explicitly constituted to advance the Zoroastrian religious faith and serve needy Zoroastrians worldwide, so linked to Zoroastrianism at the religion level as a global umbrella body rather than to any single Zoroastrian community.

The Bundahishn's division of cosmic history into four three thousand year ages, ending in Frashokereti, the world's renovation.

Often read as a direct answer to Zoroastrian dualism.

Follows Zubin Mehta exploring Zoroastrianism and Parsi history across three thousand five hundred years, with dramatized sequences of Zarathustra.

Yazd holds the largest surviving Zoroastrian community in Iran.

Adds a specific, dated imperial encounter between the community's ninth century migration to Gujarat and its eighteenth century establishment of Bombay as a communal centre already recorded here: a Mughal emperor's own invitation of a Zoroastrian high priest to his court and the land grant that followed.

Adds a specific, dated setback between Zoroastrianism becoming the Achaemenid state's de facto religion and its restoration as Persia's state religion under the Sasanian dynasty in 224 CE, both already recorded here: Alexander's burning of Persepolis and the loss of the royal archive's copy of the Avesta, an episode Zoroastrian tradition remembered as a deliberate attack on the Good Religion.

Adds a milestone in Zoroastrianism's history under Hellenistic rule between Alexander the Great burning Persepolis and scattering the Avesta in 330 BCE and the Parthian king Vologases I ordering the Avesta's scattered texts collected in the middle of the first century CE, both already recorded here: Antiochus I of Commagene building his hierothesion atop Nemrud Dagi, with its syncretic cult of Zeus fused with Ahura Mazda, conventionally dated to around 62 BCE.

Closes a gap of just over a year since 2025's citation of the Texas House of Representatives' Zoroastrian Day resolution, moving the map from a single state legislature's recognition to the federation's own continent wide infrastructure planning initiative.

Zoroastrianism's map had nothing after 1979's Iranian Revolution and nothing at all about the diaspora Parsi community's own modern demographic history. Adds a dated institutional response distinct from the Iran-centered persecution events already on the map.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Zoroastrianism's history between the Gujarat migration in 936 and Akbar's invitation to Dastur Meherji Rana in 1578, both already recorded here: Nariman Hoshang's 1478 journey to Yazd that opened the Persian Rivayats, a correspondence on ritual and law between the Zoroastrian communities of India and Iran that continued into the eighteenth century.

Adds a milestone in Zoroastrian history between Zoroastrians settling in Gujarat around 936 and Nariman Hoshang opening the Persian Rivayats correspondence in 1478, both already recorded here: Neryosang Dhaval's Sanskrit translations of core Zoroastrian scripture, which kept the texts legible to a Parsi community whose fluency in Avestan and Pahlavi was receding.

Adds a milestone in Zoroastrian history between the Sasanian dynasty making Zoroastrianism Persia's state religion in 224 and the Arab conquest ending Zoroastrian rule in Persia from 633, both already recorded here: Shapur I's trilingual inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht, around 262 CE, recording his endowment of five fire temples with fixed daily offerings for his own and his family's souls.

Zoroastrianism's most recent event on this atlas's map by more than two centuries, and its first reversal since the Arab conquest already on record; the tradition's map otherwise ends at 1728.

Closes a three year gap since 2022's citation of the 12th World Zoroastrian Congress in New York City, moving the map from a global diaspora gathering to a state legislature's own formal recognition of the community in Texas.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Zoroastrian history between Alexander the Great burning Persepolis and scattering the Avesta in 330 BCE and Zoroastrianism becoming Persia's state religion in 224, both already recorded here: the tradition Zoroastrians themselves record of the Parthian king Vologases I ordering the Avesta's scattered texts sought out and collected back together during his reign of about 51 to 78 CE.

Zoroastrianism's earliest event on this atlas's map, more than six centuries before the existing Sassanid state-religion event (224 to 379 CE) and under a different, earlier Persian empire.

Closes a 13 year gap since 2013's India Launches the Jiyo Parsi Scheme, the most recent event already on Zoroastrianism's map, with the faith's first congress held in the United States in over two decades.

The Faravahar (winged-disc figure) is a widely used emblem of Zoroastrianism.