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I find the anecdote(?) of how the first Parsi refugees convinced the ruler of the port city of Surat to let them immigrate wholesome. The ruler summoned the Pa
by occamschainsaw 5y ago
I find the anecdote(?) of how the first Parsi refugees convinced the ruler of the port city of Surat to let them immigrate wholesome.
The ruler summoned the Parsi representatives to his court. When asked how would they assimilate in the local society, the Parsis asked for some sugar and milk. They mixed it in front of the ruler and said that this is how they will assimilate, not changing the society but making it sweeter.
Even today the Parsi dialect of the Gujarati language is polite and sweet.
- cputester 5y agoSanjan, not Surat. This story is unsubstantiated nonsense, and there is little to no evidence that the Parsis were originally refugees. Archaeological expeditions were already done in Sanjan, you can look up the results. > That the Zoroastrian migrants to Sanjan were basically a mercantile group is borne out by records as well as by excavated material. Andre Wink goes further and adds that the migration was not so much due to religious persecution as much as ‘a readjustment of commercial patterns which had arisen long before Islam, and, to an extent at least, a response to new opportunities in the transit trade between the Islamic world and al-Hind’ THE LANDING OF THE ZOROASTRIANS AT SANJAN The archaeological evidence - Rukshana Nanji and Homi Dhalla
- unmole 5y agoThere's an additional detail in the apocryphal story. The king and the Parsis didn't have a language in common. The king was reluctant to allow them to settle. To communicate this, he dops a few pebbles into a container full of milk which promptly overflows. The implication being that the kingdom was full. The Parsis then mix sugar into the milk implying they would assimilate.