Parsi New Year, Jamshedi Navroz, Zoroastrians
- Tuesday, August 18, 2009, 13:13
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Jamshedi Navroz is the Parsi New Year. It usually falls on 21st March. Parsi New Year was named after the legendary King of Persia, Jamshed who started the Parsi Calendar. As per the Parsi mythology, universe is recreated on this day and life with all its glory is cherished. Navroz means spring and is believed Mother Nature casts her spell by dressing up like a young bride. Thus, Navroz gives a new vision to everyone’s life. Parsis celebrate the day with jollity and mirth.
Parsi New Year Traditions
Jamshedi Navroz is the time to be with the near and dear ones and pay respect to the elders of the family. On this day, people get up early in the morning, clean their house, take bath and dress up in new clothes. They decorate the entrance of their houses with colored powders, light incense sticks and place a burning coal scuttle sprinkled with sandalwood powder. This is done to keep the air clean and fresh. There is also a tradition of offer food to the poor on this day.
Parsis lay down certain auspicious items on the table on the day of New Year. It includes a sacred book, a picture of Zarathustra, mirror, candles, incense burner, fruits, flowers, a goldfish bowl, sugar, bread and some coins. These things symbolize prosperity and longevity for the family members.
Parsi New Year Traditions
Parsi delicacies play a very important role in the New Year celebrations. A sweet Ravo (made from sugar, milk and suji) and vermicelli are the best breakfast for Navroz. After breakfast, whole family visits a nearby Fire Temple or Agiary. Priests perform a thanks giving prayer in the temple called Jashan and the congregation offers sandalwood to the Holy Fire with covered heads. They wish each other ‘Sal Mubarak’.
Parsi Navroz lunch consists of pulav (with nuts and saffron), fish and other spicy non-vegetarian food. Cooking plain rice and moong dal is a must in Parsi community. Every visitor to the house is welcomed with sprinkle of rose water and offering faluda (rose flavored chilled vermicelli).
New Year Celebrations ends on the 13th day from the New Year’s day. It is known as ‘Sizdah be dar’. It is the custom of leaving the house for public celebrations. These celebrations are done by visiting out with friends and family members. On this day, people throw their sabzeh (seeds grown at Navroz) into a river. Some unmarried girls tie sprouts of sabzeh and wish for good fortune and love in life while some crack jokes calling it the thirteenth lie(same as April’s fool).
Jamshedi Navroze is one of the three main festive days in the Parsi Calendar. The others being Parsi New year in August and Khordad Saal, the birthday of Zarathustra.Navroze falls on March 21st, which is also Spring Equinox. It is celebrated the world over in various manifestations. It heralds the coming of Spring. In Iran it is celebrated as a ten day celebration and is the one Zoroastrian festival celebrated in an otherwise Islamic country.
Over time, the festival has sometimes been labelled “Jamshedji” navroze, which is a misnomer. It is Jamshedi Navroze, after the ancient Sassanian King Jamshed, who proclaimed the day as the start of the ancient Persian Calendar.
Navroze is one of the oldest known festivals of the Parsis. Firdausi, in his Shah Namesh, Book of Kings, attributes its origin to the legendary King of Persia, Jamshed son of Tehmooraz of the Peshdadian dynasty in Iran. Persia was ruled by many dynasties, the last being the Zoroastrians. It is said that Jamshed was a great king and cared for the welfare of his subjects. Though there were no clocks to measure time, the King sought the help of the great astronomers and mathematicians of his day who devised a calendar which was known as the “Tacquim-e-Nowrooze-e-Sheheriyari”. The King accordingly decided that Navroze or the New Year would start on the Vernal Equinox when night and day were of equal durations
Celebrating Parsi New Year
By arzan sam wadia ⋅ August 20, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment
BY Rakshande Italia
If I cherished one special day during the year, besides my birthday, it was the New Year – not Jan. 1, but a day in August when members of my tiny Zoroastrian community in Mumbai, India, celebrated the beginning of their calendar year.
Colloquially referred as Parsi New Year, the day was extra-special as community members, the Parsis, party all day long. One prime reason that this day was special is that unlike the scores of Hindu festivals, which are an all-year-round affair, our community celebrates only two others in the year. Navroze, a celebration of spring equinox, and Khodadsal, the birthday of our prophet Zarathusthtra.
You see, our forefathers landed in India in the eighth century after fleeing the Arab invasion in Persia, refusing to leave their Zoroastrian religion, which is said to be one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions, founded around 1200 B.C.
Today, there are only 150,000 Zoroastrians left worldwide. While India houses the largest population – 65,000 – the Greater Toronto Area comes in second with 6,000. Toronto is unique because Zoroastrians from India, Pakistan and Iran come together here, sharing the same religion even as they have different customs, cultures and languages.
On Aug. 20, Toronto’s Zoroastrians will celebrate the new year, congregating in two community centres in the GTA – one at Bayview and Steeles avenues and another in Oakville. The evening starts with a Jashan, a prayer ceremony, ending late but only after a sumptuous meal and loads of entertainment.
In India, the community doesn’t congregate together as it does here, but there’s a set pattern to the celebration.
In India, you get up early and enjoy sev, a sweet-roasted vermicelli topped with exotic dry fruits and sweet yogurt. Then you don a new outfit and, in your mind, thank the tailor, once more, for delivering it on time (as orders are placed months in advance). You then go to the fire temple, place of worship, where the quaint scent of sandalwood fills the air and the entire temple is lit up with hundreds of oil lanterns, which look even more beautiful in the dark (most big fire temples intentionally don’t have electricity).
When you return home, you gorge on the traditional meal of dal-chaval and patio-thick lentils gravy with rice and spicy prawns or fried fish – all washed down with liberal doses of beer or wine.
After a short snooze, it’s time for entertainment, which takes the form of a parsi natak, a play that’s usually a comedy full of gaffes. As a teenager, I’d find some jokes so corny that I once even resisted going, but on that day you’ve got to grin and bear it – after all, people all around you are laughing.
Next stop is dinner at a restaurant that’s full of Parsee customers, whom you politely greet even though you don’t know them.
As a community, we can laugh at ourselves, but around the world, Zoroastrians are respected for two distinct traits – their honesty and philanthropy, which tie in with the religion’s core beliefs of good thoughts, good words and good deeds, exemplified by the building schools, hospitals, charitable institutions and housing colonies throughout India.
The highly educated community produced pioneers in business, medicine, law, scientific research and atomic energy. Even today, if one walks around Mumbai, several statues in key public places remind us of those Parsi luminaries.
Statues may be missing here, but Parsi authors such as Rohinton Mistry have put Canada on the world stage as have doctors such as Khursheed Jeejeebhoy, Toronto’s top gastroenterologist at St Michael’s Hospital and recipient of 23 international awards and author of 300 research papers.
Philanthropists such as Dr. Dhun Noria, who migrated here with barely $8 in her pocket, is now chief of pathology and the director of laboratory at The Scarborough Hospital, donating more than half a million to various projects within and outside the Zoroastrian community, including the Women’s Health Clinic for the emergency and critical services center at The Scarborough Hospital.
As the diaspora carves its own identity here, Zoroastrians from Iran, Pakistan and India are making efforts to mesh and celebrate each other’s unique cultures and customs, said Daraius Bharucha, who conducts religious classes at the Darbe Meher in Toronto. As well, to encourage Zoroastrian entrepreneurship, a new World Zarthushti Chamber of Commerce has also been set up to help business folk succeed.
As for me, the new year is a time for some nostalgia. So when my brother calls from India, I promptly ask him what natak he went to and if the jokes are still as funny? Out here, some things have changed, some haven’t. I don’t go to the tailor, but make sure my kids wear new clothes. And despite them insisting I not bother cooking sweet sev or dal chaval and patio, I make sure I cook at least one of them with all the trimmings.
Original article here
EVERY YEAR CHEZ PANISSE celebrates the coming of Spring with a dinner honoring Parsi New Year, with a menu conceived and executed by Niloufer Ichaporia King, who was born in Bombay to a Parsi family. There have been seventeen thirteen years of these dinners, or perhaps it is seventeen thirteen times these dinners have been presented, I’m not sure which. I think Lindsey and I have been at nearly every one, and they just keep getting better, better in every respect: the conception, the authenticity (which I judge wholly intuitively, knowing nothing of Indian cuisine, let alone Parsi), the richness, the nutritive quality, the colors, aromas, flavors, and textures.
And, you might say, even the fifth sense, hearing: most obviously in the snap of the chipati pappadum, flavored with subtle chili and pungent cuminseed, but more subtly yet more substantially in the musical quality of the dinner, its sequence of courses, rhythms, and repeated notes.
We began with little dishes of cashews, lightly seasoned to match the pappadum, and pickled tiny carrots and radish slices, with a nice twist on Kir royale: a glass of cava flavored with pomegranate juice.
Then came Bombay potato balls — deep fried mashed potatoes, I’d say — with fried curry leaves and steamed semolina bread, with an avocado chutney on the side, a delicious Parsi version of guacamole, perhaps, all prettily laid out on a banana leaf. Those curry leaves! crisp, pungent, deep…
Then a bowl of Niloufer’s traditional “Auspicious dal,” to confirm the promise of the New Year, with its Zen-like circle of spices further delineating the significance. With these two courses we had a fine Pinot blanc from Domaine Weinbach (Alsace), 2006.
Three oysters on the half shell came next, an Arcimboldo version of a fleur-de-lis, on a bed of rock salt, with a mignonette sauce lifted judiciously with lime and chili: perfect with a little glass of Crémant pink with the skins of its pinot noir.
Plat principal: and the photo does not do it justice. Grilled and braised rabbit in pistachio cream; springtime pulao (pilaf) with peas; a deep green note of nettles and chard, reminding us that Spring issues from the dark depths of Winter; and chicory salad with tamarind and slices of kumquats. The rabbit was succulent, meaty yet delicate, the cream sauce complex but light with its pistachio and turmeric. With this, a cuirous an very good “Vassal de Puech” Languedoc 2006, earthy and fertile.
Rhubarb Ice, faluda, and sweets:
the faluda recalling the feel (though not the flavor!) of the pistacho cream, the little date pastry visually recalling the Bombay potato… what an intelligent, artful, good-humored dinner this was. And, as always, a delightfully printed menu decorated by David King (who also pounce-stencils the ritual blessings on the steps to the restaurant), and fabulous floral displays… too bad it comes but once a year. At other times we make do with Niloufer’s fine book, My Bombay Kitchen, and look forward to next March.
Parsi New Year, Jamshedi Navroz is the Parsi New Year, Tacquim-e-Nowrooze-e-Sheheriyari. Parsi New Year was named after the legendary King of Persia, Jamshed who started the Parsi Calendar. It is said that Jamshed was a great king and cared for the welfare of his subjects. As per the Parsi mythology, universe is recreated on this day and life with all its glory is cherished. Navroz means spring and is believed Mother Nature casts her spell by dressing up like a young bride. Thus, Navroz gives a new vision to everyone’s life. Parsis celebrate the day with jollity and mirth.
As a community Zoroastrians are respected for two distinct traits – their honesty and philanthropy, which tie in with the religion’s core beliefs of good thoughts, good words and good deeds, exemplified by the building schools, hospitals, charitable institutions and housing colonies throughout India.
Forefathers landed in India in the eighth century after fleeing the Arab invasion in Persia, refusing to leave their Zoroastrian religion, which is said to be one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions, founded around 1200 B.C.
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Parsi New Year, Jamshedi Navroz is the Parsi New Year. Hope and joy for all the parsi friends for this parsi new year. I hope that it will bring for me also joy and happiness during this parsi new year. Iam hear coz, I am looking for my long lost parsi friend. Her name is MAHZABEEN IRANI. I knew her when she was working in YMCA International House, at Bombay Central during 1990-1991. She was staying at Parsi colony, Mumbai. She might be 43-44 yrs now. Please my friends, help me in locating her and I will be greatfull each one of you.
Best Regargs,
Vinu
wow, this very interesting!!!