On October 11, 2018, the newly launched SOAS Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies remembers and celebrates the life and work of Professor John Russell Hinnells, whose groundbreaking work on the Zoroastrian communities around the globe has had a lasting impact on our understanding of Zoroastrian life worldwide. The exhibition “Living Zoroastrianism” engages the public in the Virtual Reality (VR) experience of a three-thousand years old Zoroastrian ritual, the Yasna, in which the viewer will be immersed by means of VR glasses. The SOAS’s Multimedia Yasna (MUYA) research team filmed the ritual with cutting edge spherical video technology in Mumbai in 2017. Visitors can also experience contemporary Zoroastrian Iran via the digitized oral testimony of over 300 interviewees. Displays of manuscripts, costumes, paintings and artefacts provide additional information about this ancient religion.
The Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies, dedicated to enhancing the research, learning and teaching, and outreach of one of the world’s oldest living religions, was launched on June 27, 2018. Named after Shapoorji Pallonji, the philanthropist and industrialist in India, the Institute came about after SOAS was awarded a five million pounds gift in July 2017. Shapoor Mistry, chairman of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, said the launch of the Institute filled him with pride.
Dr. Sarah Stewart, the co-chair of the Institute who also holds the Shapoorji Pallonji Lectureship in Zoroastrianism said, “I hope that many of our colleagues at SOAS and members of the Zoroastrian community will help us to shape the future of the Institute to make it the success that Shapoor Mistry and his family wish for and so richly deserve”.
Professor Almut Hintze, Zartoshty Brothers Professor of Zoroastrianism, who will co-chair the institute with Dr. Stewart, also said a few words on the history of SOAS’s research in Zoroastrianism. She explained that Zoroastrianism has been studied at SOAS since 1929, thanks to the Parsi community’s lectureship, which was held by Sir Harold Walter Bailey and Walter Bruno Henning. Renowned scholar Mary Boyce also taught Zoroastrianism from 1947-1982. Many other distinguished scholars of Zoroastrianism and Iranian studies have taught at SOAS, including John Hinnells, ADH Bivar, Philip Kreyenbroek, Nicholas Sims-Williams, and the current co-chairs of the Institute Sarah Stewart and Almut Hintze.
The Institute is a new milestone for the Zoroastrian community worldwide because it will ensure the academic research in Zoroastrianism through an endowed post, which complements the already existing Zartoshty Brothers Chair in Zoroastrianism. Moreover, a substantial part of the endowment will fund student scholarships in Zoroastrianism in perpetuity. The Institute’s endowment for outreach will support activities and collaborations with organisations around the globe.
