The Zoroastrian belief in one supreme being and good versus evil had a profound influence on the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenian Persian Empire, freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon in 539 b.c. and returned them to Jerusalem, where they rebuilt their temple. Their exposure to Zoroastrianism in Babylonia and Persia, many scholars believe, helped solidify basic elements of Jewish belief, including an afterlife and final judgment. The ancient Greeks noted the wisdom of Zoroastrian sages, which gave rise to the Three Wise Men of the New Testament. And scholars note the similarity between Zoroastrian and Muslim practices of praying five times a day, and the ritual ablution that accompanies these prayers.
The Zoroastrian god is not a negotiating or punishing deity. There's no notion of original sin that requires repentance. Rather, the Zoroastrian god is more like the force of gravity, indifferent to your daily well-being. Your job is to fight for asha (truth, righteousness, and order) and against druj (filth, lies, and chaos). After death, your soul, or urvan, reunites with your guardian spirit, or fravashi, and lives on in a world of song or a world of purgatory. Then comes the final battle, when good triumphs over evil and everyone is resurrected to live in a perfect world free of war, hunger, and earthly desires.
India's Zoroastrians—known as Parsis—claim to be the true custodians of the religion. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the former center of the Persian Empire, Zoroastrians have been persecuted and forced to take many of their practices underground. Zoroastrianism claimed millions of followers at its height; now there are possibly 15,000 to 25,000 adherents left in Iran. Parsis number around 50,000 in India, concentrated mostly around Mumbai and the state of Gujarat, with less than a thousand more in neighboring Pakistan. The most orthodox of them consider only the children of Zoroastrian parents to be true Parsis, and they frown on marriage outside the faith. These restrictions, coupled with a decreasing birth rate, have led to a rapid decline of the Parsi population.
Click Here to read in full, this interesting article in the Apr 24 issue of National Geographic
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