The Iranshah at Udvada is the oldest Parsi fire, and the account of how it got there rests on a single late source.
The account
Zoroastrians fled Iran after the Arab conquest, sailed to Gujarat, and sought refuge.
The famous exchange: the local ruler, Jadi Rana, sent a vessel of milk filled to the brim, signifying that his land was full. The Zoroastrian priest stirred in sugar and returned it, the milk unchanged in volume, and sweetened. We will enrich you and not displace you.
Conditions were accepted: they would explain their religion, adopt the local language, their women would wear the sari, weddings would be held after dark, and they would not bear arms.
The fire was consecrated in 721, and thereafter moved repeatedly ahead of danger, to the caves at Bahrot, then Vansda, then Navsari for over three centuries, and finally to Udvada in 1742.
The source problem
The whole narrative rests on the Qissa-i Sanjan, a Persian poem composed around 1600, some nine centuries after the events it describes.
Its author states that he set down what he had been told. It is not a chronicle, no contemporary source corroborates it, and it was composed in a community that had reasons to want an account of its own origins and its terms of settlement.
The consequences are what one would expect:
- The date of the migration is genuinely disputed, with scholarly proposals ranging across the eighth to tenth centuries.
- The traditional chronology does not entirely add up on its own terms.
- The Jadi Rana episode may be foundation legend rather than record.
It is accepted by nearly all devout Parsis, and should be given as what the community holds rather than as established history.
What is not in doubt is that Zoroastrians migrated to Gujarat, that they settled on terms, and that a fire has burned in that community's keeping for a very long time.
The village
Udvada is small, and exists around the temple and the priestly families who serve it.
Access is restricted to Parsis, without exception, and enforced more strictly than at Yazd, there is no viewing arrangement for outsiders, and the sanctum is not visible from the street.
The fire is tended in the same way as at Yazd: five times daily, by priests wearing the padan, at hours dividing the day.
The demography
The community's present position is not in doubt and is not encouraging.
About fifty-seven thousand Parsis were counted in India in 2011, down from roughly a hundred thousand a century earlier. The decline continues, driven by late marriage, low birth rates, emigration, and rules on conversion and on the status of children of Parsi women who marry out.
It is one of the smallest religious communities in the world to maintain institutions of this antiquity, and the Iranshah, whatever its actual date, has been kept alight by a group that now numbers fewer people than a small town.