Organised by

Iran Heritage Foundation

Date

Tuesday 1st July 2015, 6.30pm

Location

Cavendish Conference Centre, 22 Duchess Mews, London W1G 9DT

Description

Although relations between Zoroastrian Iran and India go back to at least the Sasanian period, Parsi tradition dates the migration from Iran and early settlement of Zoroastrians on the west coast of India to either the 8th or 10th centuries CE.

This talk will discuss the development of Parsi identity on Indian soil, which was both shaped and challenged by feelings of allegiance to the old country mixed with a desire to put down roots in the new. It will draw on texts – religious, epic and poetic - that represent different literary traditions and reflect the shifting relations between Parsis in India and their co-religionists in Iran.

Biography

Dr Sarah Stewart is a lecturer in Zoroastrianism in the Department of the Study of Religions at SOAS. Formerly Deputy Director of the London Middle East Institute, she is co-convenor, with Sussan Babaie (previously with Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis), of the annual Idea of Iran series of symposia, established by the Soudavar Memorial Foundation, and co-editor of the proceedings published by IB Tauris. In 2013 she was the lead curator of the exhibition: The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, which is due to go to the National Museum in Delhi in 2016. Her current research is on the living tradition of Zoroastrianism in Iran.

---