Living The Good Religion Among Others: Cosmopolitan Zoroastrian Thought From The Middle Ages To Modernity

By Dan Sheffield

Khorshed F. Jungalwala Memorial Lecture at XVll NAZC 2014 in Los Angeles

Daniel Sheffield, a Ph.D in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, specializing in Iranian and Persian studies.

” Zoroastrians have never been isolated from the world around them. As Iranians in Antiquity left their homes for commerce and conquest, they came into contact with a variety of religious traditions spanning the Asian continent. The universe of of medieval Zoroastrian thought written in Farsi, Sanskrit and Gujerati share intellectual spaces with their Muslim, Hindu and Jain neighbors. Emergence of ideas of religious pluralism among Zoroastrian thinkers in the 17th and 18th centuries. And, finally the impact of European education on Zoroastrian communities, how language and education affect how we interpret our faith, our view of the world, the place if our communities within it, and the role of other communities around us.