Neryosang Dhaval Translates Zoroastrian Scripture into Sanskrit

Over a century and a half after Zoroastrians fleeing Iran settled in Gujarat around 936, already recorded here, and roughly three hundred seventy years before Nariman Hoshang opened the Persian Rivayats correspondence with Iran's remaining Zoroastrian communities in 1478, also recorded here, the Parsi priest Neryosang Dhaval, working from Sanjan, translated central Zoroastrian texts from Middle Persian into Sanskrit and rendered others into Pazand, the script Parsi scholars used to transcribe Pahlavi works phonetically. His translations included a Sanskrit rendering of the Atash Niyayish, one of Zoroastrianism's five fire prayers, and he is remembered for work the scholar Mary Boyce called one of the peaks of Parsi scholarship, showing an admirable extensive knowledge of both Sanskrit and Middle Persian. Boyce places Neryosang in the late eleventh or early twelfth century, while the Parsi high priest and scholar M.N. Dhalla placed him a century later; either dating falls within the same long span separating the Sanjan settlement from the Rivayats correspondence. As fluency in Avestan and Pahlavi receded among a Parsi community generations removed from Iran, Neryosang's Sanskrit renderings kept core scripture legible to priests and laity being educated in the language of their new homeland.