This is apropos your editorial "Not permissible in India” (Parsiana, May 21-June 6, 2023) about women mobedyars. The Visperad 3:4 says: "I want to appoint the woman whose good thoughts, words and deeds prevail, who is well taught, who is an authority for rites and who is truthful. (We worship) Spenta Armaiti (a female Amesha Spenta) and all your noble women O Ahura Mazda!”
The rights that the Nirangistan accords to women for performing various rites often seem unbelievable to present day priests. Even the ninth century texts, written 200 years after the Arab conquest of Iran, accord the same status to men and women by maintaining that there will be 15 male and 15 female helpers of the Saoshyant (savior) who will usher us into renovation/resurrection (Bundahishn 34.16). And as anthropologist Janet Ameghi, author of The Zoroastrians of Iran: Conversion, Assimilation or Persistence tells us, even the Zoroastrian women living in the Islamic Iran at present have acquired equal status with men.
A female mobedyar participating in a religious ceremony
The Bundahishn says that "Ohrmazd bears in himself, as a mother her child, the ideal form of the world.” Thrice in the Gathas Zarathushtra confirms gender equality — in Yasna 53.6 unequivocally asserting "This truth (haithya, the Sanskrit equivalent being satya) is equally true for men or for women.” This is in harmony with his ardent attempt at basing his message fundamentally on free will, individual choice (Yasna 30.2, 45.2, 31.11, etc). For the final goal of frashokereti (renovation/resurrection of the world), Zarathushtra asserts that it requires active participation of both men and women to bring it about fully.
Much of the stigma attached in our later literature stems from the notion that menstruation and childbirth are polluting; whereas, French orientalist James Darmesteter observed that woman "ought to be considered pure amongst the purest, since life has been increased by her” (SBE IV 1 xix), which is what Zarathushtra promotes. However, such purity laws benefit those who designed them the most, that is, the priests. Researcher Mary Douglas has famously said the same of Israeli rabbis (priests). I have discovered many similarities between Jewish and Zoroastrian ritual practices, perhaps as a result of the 200-year-long Persian rule over Israel. There may be some Zoroastrian influences on Judaism lurking there, as I have extensively noted on
www.avesta.org. An interested reader will also find many more well researched and factual articles on the website.
Above all, the real basis for Zarathushtra’s teachings being free will/individual choice, it is odd that some 3,500 years after him, we have still not grasped the essence of his message. Even Mazda adheres to this universal principle and makes his own choice in governing the world, as per Yasna 32.2. Let us therefore finally restore the status of women as our prophet had instructed us.
Dr KERSEY H. ANTIA
Orlando, Illinois, USA