Ilm-e-Khshnoom - Traditional Zoroastrianism: Tenets of the Religion

Editorial
ILM-E-KHSHNOOM, THE MASTER KEY TO
DECIPHER THE DAENA
Two years of this humble Parsi Pukar have proved to us to be the years of several pleasant and painful
revelations. A pleasant one is that the intelligent Parsi youth have a craving to know about our Religion. The
painful one is that their efforts to know result in utter disappointment, or their craving remains unsatiated.
Our Religion has an imposing name: Mazda-yasni Zarthustri Daena. It is the Parsi way of life. Parsis lived
by it since millenniums. But to-day our youths and elders are just at a loss to understand what it is all about.
A thousand questions arise but not answered at all or answered in a slipshod way.
Why is the Avesta-Manthra the best form of prayer? What is in it ?
Why should there be 72 threads in Kushti and 9 stitches in Sudreh ? Why is Sudreh-Kushti compulsory
for a PARSI ?
Why are vocational fires like potter's and baker's and distiller's are utilised while preparing the sacred
Atash Beheram Fire? Why even the fire from a burnt Hindu corpse?
Are our rituals - Kriyakaam - just symbolic or do they really help the departed souls?
Why Dokhma ? And why 301 nails in its foundation?
Why "Boonak-pasbani" ? Has the dictum of preservation of the racial gene any religious sanction?
Is there any religious or spiritual or mystical foundation to the moral code said to have been
prescribed in our Daena ?
And on and on the questions multiply. And no answers worth the name are forthcoming.
NO ANSWER FROM
THE WESTERN STUDIES
There is a "study" of our Religion founded by European and other western scholars. There are lots of hard
bound imposing books and volumes emanating from that western "study". We have Dastoors and scholars
well versed in that "study". Yet, the answers to the basic questions like the aforesaid will not be found,
howsoever deeply you delve into those decorative volumes; and a little cross questioning would reveal that
the scholarly Dastoors too have no definite solid-based answers. You will find them hazy and confusing or
evasive and escapist even at the intellectual level, leave aside the spiritual, devotional or mystical level,
which the western oriented studies are utterly devoid of. Not only that, but those studies can well lead
you to loss of faith or provide you with fine scholarly excuses to avoid the spiritual and moral tenets and
observances of the Daena. (That phenomenon has already occurred in our community.)
There is however a golden ray of hope in the dark clouds of ignorance. That is IIm-e-Khshnoom.
From the last issue of this humble Parsi Pukar, we have initiated a series of articles under the title
"WHAT IS ILM-E-KHSHNOOM AND WHY?"
The idea is to furnish such data and materials as will convince you that IIm-e-Khshnoom is the
genuine key to decipher the numerous riddles of our Daena and its tenets, traditions, observances,
practices and prayers.
Religion is a matter, not of just mental reasoning, but of faith. Faith, very simply put, is the belief in the
mystical. Mystical means that major part of Nature which is beyond our experience and consciousness.
Religion by itself is mysticism. (All prophets were profound mystics.) We are therefore required to adopt faith
in our own Religion. But the river of faith has many channels, and which channel we should adopt to
understand our own Religion is a decision we can think out from the facts known to us.
The question that faces us is: In the confusing state of our religious "Studies", can we adopt IIm-e-
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