Editing Parsis (section)

=== Early years ===
The ''Qissa'' has little to say about the events that followed the establishment of Sanjan, and restricts itself to a brief note on the establishment of the "Fire of Victory" (Middle Persian: ''[[Atash Bahram]]'') at [[Sanjan, Gujarat|Sanjan]] and its subsequent move to [[Navsari]]. According to Dhalla, the next several centuries were "full of hardships" (''sic'') before Zoroastrianism "gained a real foothold in India and secured for its adherents some means of livelihood in this new country of their adoption".{{sfn|Dhalla|1938|p=447}}

Two centuries after their landing, the Parsis began to settle in other parts of Gujarat, which led to "difficulties in defining the limits of priestly jurisdiction".{{sfn|Kulke|1978|p=29}} These problems were resolved by 1290 through the division of Gujarat into five ''panthak''s (districts), each under the jurisdiction of one priestly family and their descendants. (Continuing disputes regarding jurisdiction over the ''Atash Bahram'' led to the fire being moved to Udvada in 1742, where today jurisdiction is shared in rotation among the five ''panthak'' families.)

Inscriptions at the [[Kanheri Caves]] near Mumbai suggest that at least until the early 11th century, [[Middle Persian]] was still the literary language of the hereditary Zoroastrian priesthood. Nonetheless, aside from the ''Qissa'' and the Kanheri inscriptions, there is little evidence of the Parsis until the 12th and 13th century, when "masterly"{{sfn|Dhalla|1938|p=448}} Sanskrit translations and transcriptions of the [[Avesta]] and its commentaries began to be prepared. From these translations Dhalla infers that "religious studies were prosecuted with great zeal at this period" and that the command of [[Middle Persian]] and Sanskrit among the clerics "was of a superior order".{{sfn|Dhalla|1938|p=448}}

From the 13th century to the late 16th century, the Zoroastrian priests of Gujarat sent (in all) twenty-two requests for religious guidance to their co-religionists in Iran, presumably because they considered the Iranian Zoroastrians "better informed on religious matters than themselves, and must have preserved the old-time tradition more faithfully than they themselves did".{{sfn|Dhalla|1938|p=457}} These transmissions and their replies – assiduously preserved by the community as the ''[[rivayat]]''s ([[epistle]]s) – span the years 1478–1766 and deal with both religious and social subjects. From a superficial 21st century point of view, some of these ''ithoter'' ("questions") are remarkably trivial – for instance, ''Rivayat'' 376: whether ink prepared by a non-Zoroastrian is suitable for copying [[Avestan language]] texts – but they provide a discerning insight into the fears and anxieties of the early modern Zoroastrians. Thus, the question of the ink is symptomatic of the fear of assimilation and the loss of identity, a theme that dominates the questions posed and continues to be an issue into the 21st century. So also the question of conversion of ''Juddin''s (non-Zoroastrians) to Zoroastrianism, to which the reply (R237, R238) was: acceptable, even meritorious.{{sfn|Dhalla|1938|pp=474–475}}

Nonetheless, "the precarious condition in which they lived for a considerable period made it impracticable for them to keep up their former [[proselytizing]] zeal. The instinctive fear of disintegration and absorption in the vast multitudes among whom they lived created in them a spirit of exclusiveness and a strong desire to preserve the racial characteristics and distinctive features of their community. Living in an atmosphere surcharged with the Hindu caste system, they felt that their own safety lay in encircling their fold by rigid caste barriers".{{sfn|Dhalla|1938|p=474}} Even so, at some point (possibly shortly after their arrival in India), the Zoroastrians – perhaps determining that the [[social stratification]] that they had brought with them was unsustainable in the small community – did away with all but the hereditary priesthood (called the ''asronih'' in Sassanid Iran). The remaining estates – the ''(r)atheshtarih'' (nobility, soldiers, and civil servants), ''vastaryoshih'' (farmers and herdsmen), ''hutokshih'' (artisans and labourers) – were folded into an all-comprehensive class today known as the ''behdini'' ("followers of ''daena''", for which "good religion" is one translation). This change would have far reaching consequences. For one, it opened the gene pool to some extent since until that time inter-class marriages were exceedingly rare (this would continue to be a problem for the priesthood until the 20th century). For another, it did away with the boundaries along occupational lines, a factor that would endear the Parsis to the 18th- and 19th-century colonial authorities who had little patience for the unpredictable complications of the [[Indian caste system|Hindu caste system]] (such as when a clerk from one caste would not deal with a clerk from another).{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}