BBC News, Mumbai
BBCHidden in a lane within the southern finish of the monetary capital of India, Mumbai, is a museum devoted to the followers of one of many oldest religions on this planet, Zoroastrismo.
The Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla museum paperwork the historical past and legacy of the traditional Parsi neighborhood – a small ethnic group that’s quickly reducing and resides largely in India.
Now estimated at solely 50,000 to 60,000, it’s believed that the parsis are descendants of Persians who flee from non secular persecution by Islamic sovereigns centuries in the past.
Despite their vital contributions to the financial and cultural cloth of India, loads on the neighborhood of Parsi stays little identified by the standard inhabitants and the most important world.
“The newly renewed museum hopes to shake off a few of this darkness by inviting folks to discover the historical past, tradition and traditions of the Parsi neighborhood by way of the uncommon historic artifacts on show,” says Kerman Fatakia, curator of the museum.
Some of those embody cuneiform bricks, terracotta pots, cash and different objects from locations akin to Babylon, Mesopotamia, Susa and Iran and are dated to 4000-5000 BC
These are locations the place the Zoroastrian Iranian kings as soon as ruled, such because the Achaemenian dynasties, Parthian and Sasanian.
There are additionally Yazd artifacts, a metropolis within the central Iran that was as soon as a sterile desert and the place the place many Zoroastrians settled after fleeing different areas of Iran after the Arab invasion within the seventh century BC
One of the exceptional artifacts on show is a duplicate of an clay cylinder of Ciro the Great, a Persian king who was the founding father of the Achemenid Empire.
Fatakia says that clay cylinder – often known as “Editto di Ciro” or “civic cylinder” – is among the most essential discoveries within the historical world. Inscribed in cuneiform script, outlines the rights granted by Ciro to its topics in Babylon. Amply thought-about the primary human rights card, a reply can be uncovered to the United Nations.
Then there are maps that hint the migratory routes of hundreds of Iranian Zoroastrians who fled from their nation of origin fearing the persecution and traveled in India within the eighth to the twentieth century and once more within the nineteenth century.
The assortment additionally options furnishings, manuscripts, work and portraits of parsis of distinguished – together with Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, founding father of the long-lasting Tata group, who has manufacturers akin to Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley Tea.
Another shocking part exhibits artifacts collected by parsis which turns into wealthy in the beginning of the nineteenth century, exchanging tea, silk, cotton – and specifically opium – with China. The exhibitions embody conventional sari parsi influenced by initiatives of China, France and different areas modeled by these international industrial bonds.
Two of probably the most compelling exhibitions of the museum are the replicas of a Torre di Silenzio and a temple of Parsi Fire.
The Torre del Silenzio, or Dakhma, is the place the parsis depart their deaths to be returned to nature – neither buried nor cremated. “The reply exhibits precisely what occurs to the physique as soon as positioned there,” says Fatakia, noting that the entry to the precise towers is restricted to a couple chosen.
The natural-size reply of the Fire Temple is equally fascinating, providing a uncommon have a look at a usually off-limits sacred house in not parades. Model on an essential temple of Mumbai, it presents sacred motifs impressed by historical Persian structure in Iran.
The Alpaiwala Museum, initially based in 1952 in what was then Bombay, is among the oldest establishments within the metropolis. Recently renewed, now it has fashionable show with nicely -understood exhibitions in home windows. Each customer is obtainable a guided tour.
“It is a small museum but it surely is filled with historical past,” says Fatakia.
“And it is a superb place not just for the residents of Mumbai or of India to be taught extra concerning the Parsi neighborhood, however for folks from everywhere in the world.”
