Zoroastrianism on the Silk Road — The Silk Road Atlas

Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of the Iranian peoples, was one of the earliest and most influential of the religions to travel the Silk Road. The state religion of the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian empires, Zoroastrianism shaped the religious vocabulary of the Iranian world for more than a millennium, and elements of its theology — the cosmic dualism of light and darkness, the cult of the sacred fire, the ritual exposure of the dead — spread eastward along the trade routes. The Zoroastrian diaspora in Tang China, though small, is one of the most striking examples of the eastward transmission of Iranian religion, and the modern Parsi community is its most enduring legacy.

The religion takes its name from its traditional founder, the prophet Zarathustra (Greek: Zoroaster), who is believed to have lived in eastern Iran or Central Asia in the second millennium BCE, although the historical chronology is uncertain. The core of the Zoroastrian teaching is the opposition between Ahura Mazda, the lord of wisdom and light, and Angra Mainyu, the destructive spirit of darkness, and the obligation of the faithful to support the cosmic struggle for the triumph of light through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.

Zoroastrianism and the Sasanian Empire

Zoroastrianism became the state religion of the Sasanian Empire in the third century CE, and the Sasanian church developed an institutional structure that paralleled the imperial administration. The sacred fire, tended in temples throughout the empire, served as the visible symbol of the religion, and the Zoroastrian calendar regulated the ritual and civic life of the community.

The Sasanian Empire was the dominant power of the western and central Silk Road, and Zoroastrianism was the religion of the Sasanian court and merchant communities. The Zoroastrian fire temples that appear in the historical record of the Silk Road cities were typically Sasanian foundations, established to serve the merchants, diplomats, and garrison troops of the Sasanian state. The Sasanian period was also the formative period of the Zoroastrian tradition’s distinctive funerary practice, the exposure of the dead on mountaintop “towers of silence.”

Zoroastrianism is, of the five religions, the one that lost most to the spread of the others.

The eastward spread

Zoroastrianism traveled east along the trade routes under Sasanian patronage, and Sasanian fire temples appear in the historical record of Tang China. The Tang capital Chang’an, the modern Xi’an, had at least one Zoroastrian temple, and the religion appears in Dunhuang manuscripts. A small Zoroastrian community was present in the major Chinese cities down to the Tang period, and the religion was the subject of a Tang decree of 845, which suppressed foreign religions including Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, and Zoroastrianism.

The Zoroastrian presence in China was, however, always a minority one. The religion did not develop the monastic institutions that supported Buddhism, and the Zoroastrian community in China was dependent on the trade routes and the political support of Sasanian and later Arab and Turkic patrons. The small Zoroastrian diaspora in China survived into the Song period, but eventually disappeared, leaving only inscriptions and a few references in the official dynastic histories.

A personal note

The Zoroastrianism that traveled the Silk Road is not the same as the modern Parsi Zoroastrianism of Mumbai. The Tang-period Zoroastrian community in China left very little direct documentation, and what we know comes mostly from Chinese sources that classified Zoroastrianism as a “foreign cult.” The reader should be cautious about retrojecting modern Parsi practices onto the medieval Chinese community.

Zoroastrianism and the Sasanian Empire

The eastward spread

A personal note

Further reading

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