Artist –Chuck Marshall
Oil on Canvas
(D2) PARSI WEDDING CEREMONY
Artist –Chuck Marshall
Oil on Canvas
The Parsis are the descendants of a Zoroastrian Iranian emigration to India that is thought to have occurred in the 8th century. They are followers of a religion of ancient Persia founded by Zoroaster (also called Zarathustra), the Iranian prophet of religious reform. Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s great faiths that bears the closest resemblance to Judaism and Christianity.
Parsis believe in one indivisible God, who is the beginning and the end, who is all good; no evil originates from Him. A continuous war between the forces of good and of evil (purity and pollution) is supported by believers with good deeds, good thoughts and good speech.
God is represented in their temples by fire, symbolizing light. Rituals of initiation, marriages and funerals are important aspects of Parsi life. At a Parsi wedding, the priests wear snow-white vestments, the color of purity and holiness. Red pigment plays an important part, substituted as a symbol of the blood of the former custom of animal sacrifice.
Artist –Chuck Marshall
Oil on Canvas
The Parsis are the descendants of a Zoroastrian Iranian emigration to India that is thought to have occurred in the 8th century. They are followers of a religion of ancient Persia founded by Zoroaster (also called Zarathustra), the Iranian prophet of religious reform. Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s great faiths that bears the closest resemblance to Judaism and Christianity.
Parsis believe in one indivisible God, who is the beginning and the end, who is all good; no evil originates from Him. A continuous war between the forces of good and of evil (purity and pollution) is supported by believers with good deeds, good thoughts and good speech.
God is represented in their temples by fire, symbolizing light. Rituals of initiation, marriages and funerals are important aspects of Parsi life. At a Parsi wedding, the priests wear snow-white vestments, the color of purity and holiness. Red pigment plays an important part, substituted as a symbol of the blood of the former custom of animal sacrifice.
Further information on the Parsi Faith:
Parsis or Parsees (which means 'Persian' in the Persian language) are an ethnoreligious group who migrated to the Indian subcontinent from Persia during the Muslim conquest of Persia of CE 636–651; one of two such groups (the other being Iranis). Zoroastrianism is the ethnic religion of the Parsi people. According to the Qissa-i Sanjan, Parsis migrated from Sasanian Empire to Gujarat, where they were given refuge, between the 8th and 10th century CE to avoid persecution following the Muslim conquest of Persia.
At the time of the Muslim conquest of Persia, the dominant religion of the region (which was ruled by the Sasanian Empire) was Zoroastrianism. Iranians, such as Babak Khorramdin, rebelled against Muslim conquerors for almost 200 years. During this time many Iranians (who are now called Parsis since the migration to India) chose to preserve their religious identity by fleeing from Persia to India.
The word پارسیان, pronounced "Parsian", i.e., "Parsi" in the Persian language, literally means Persian.[14] Note that Farsi is an arabization of the word Parsi which is used as an endonym of Persian, and Persian language is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajkistan, and some other former regions of the Persian Empire.
The long presence of the Parsis in India distinguishes them from the smaller Zoroastrian Indian community of Iranis, who are much more recent arrivals, mostly descended from Zoroastrians fleeing the repression of the Qajar dynasty and the general social and political tumult of late 19th- and early 20th-century Iran.