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Yazdgerd: Next Generation Scholars of Zoroastrianism

We are happy to learn that a project that we had heard of, is finally taking off.

Yazdegard.net is a website that looks to impart and disseminate scholarly research and work on Zoroastrianism, done by the new crop of Zoroastrian scholars at various universities worldwide. Our good friend Dinyar Patel is one of the contributing scholars. He is joined by Dan Sheffield, Bahman Moradian and Samuel Thrope

We look forward to a solid body of work coming out of Yazdgerd and will link to relevant articles in the future.

In a recent article titled: Dadabhai Naoroji and the Naoroji Papers in Delhi, Dinyar Patel writes:

There are around 25,000 items in the Naoroji Papers, including individual letters, booklets, pamphlets, and newspaper cuttings. The majority of this collection is in English, while an uncatalogued portion is in Gujarati, but I have also found material in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi and Telegu or Kannada. Unfortunately, the collection is in extremely bad condition, suffering from multiple forms of damage. Proper historical preservation, unfortunately, has not been a strength in modern India.

For decades, these papers were kept in cupboards and open rooms that facilitated and accelerated damage by weather and insects. Already by the 1930s and 1940s, just decades after Naoroji’s death, large portions of material were already found eaten up by worms and, in the words of one individual who surveyed them in 1943, emitting a “bad stink.” In 1968, the Papers were finally transferred to the National Archives of India, though unfortunately some damage appears to have occurred here as well. Under new directorship, the Archives is now attending to proper preservation of this valuable collection.

 

Continue reading the entire article and also check out the website.

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