Between Boston and Bombay

Cultural and Commercial Encounters of Yankees and Parsis, 1771–1865

Jenny Rose

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030252052
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

A few years after the American declaration of independence, the first American ships set sail to India. The commercial links that American merchant mariners established with the Parsis of Bombay contributed significantly to the material and intellectual culture of the early Republic in ways that have not been explored until now. This book maps the circulation of goods, capital and ideas between Bombay Parsis and their contemporaries in the northeastern United States, uncovering a surprising range of cultural interaction. Just as goods and gifts from the Zoroastrians of India quickly became an integral part of popular culture along the eastern seaboard of the U.S., so their newly translated religious texts had a considerable impact on American thought. Using a wealth of previously unpublished primary sources, this work presents the narrative of American-Parsi encounters within the broader context of developing global trade and knowledge.

© The Author(s) 2019

J. RoseBetween Boston and Bombayhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25205-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Arrivals: Parsis, Pilgrims and Puritans

Jenny Rose¹

(1)

Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA

Jenny Rose

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Preamble

This prelude to the designated timeframe of the book (1771–1865) explores some of the perceived parallels between the immigration of English “Pilgrim” and “Puritan” groups to the northeastern coast of America in the early decades of the seventeenth century, and that of Zoroastrians from Iran to the northwest Indian coast of Gujarat several centuries earlier, and from there to Bombay under British rule. A study of the founding narratives of each group—which were almost contemporary in their earliest written form—highlights their emphases on the preservation of their respective religion as a motivation for relocation. It is clear that socioeconomic factors were also at play. The early commercial enterprises and infrastructures of each group are introduced as a backdrop to their initial interactions with each other, as goods began to be shipped across the thousands of miles between the two continents (see Maps 1.1 and 1.2).

Map 1.1

The Parsi journey from Iran to India as outlined in the Qesse-ye Sanjān

Map 1.2

The “Pilgrim” journey from England to the Netherlands to America, as described by William Bradford

This is not so much a tale of two cities, as a story of two different cultural histories, which resonate with each other in part, and sometimes interweave. Each claims a centuries-old founding myth that continues to inform its respective worldview. As Norsemen were navigating the Arctic Circle, seeking new lands to settle and eventually arriving on the shores of Newfoundland, in the northwestern Indian Ocean another group of intrepid pioneers also departed by boat across turbulent seas in search of a new homeland. The narrative history of that initial journey of Zoroastrians leaving Iran from the port of Hormuz to a hazardous landing on the coast of Gujarat in northwestern India, underpins Parsi self-perception down to the present. Later European settlers came after Leif Erikson to North America, but the mythologized story of the arrival of one particular boatload of migrants from England remains intrinsic to many of the religious and political values promoted in the United States.

The perceived similarities between the founding myths of the two cultures were highlighted by a Parsi scholar-priest, Jivanji Jamshedji Modi, writing in the last century about his Zoroastrian ancestors’ journey following the incursion of Arab Muslims onto the Iranian plateau. Modi remarked: “The movements of these early Parsee emigrants from Persia can well be compared with the movements of the American Pilgrim Fathers, who left their dear country for the sake of their religion, and landed on the foreign shores of America.” ¹ Relying on information from a late sixteenth century Persian-language account by a Parsi, alongside the 9th edition of the Encylopaedia Britannica, Modi cited eight instances where the history of the American Pilgrims seemed to resemble that of the Parsi “Indian Pilgrim fathers.” These similarities included: departure from the homeland “for the sake of religion,” which was “dearer than their land”; a multistage emigration, with a period of (self-imposed) exile in an interim land “before they finally settled and flourished as a colony”; a difficult and dangerous journey due to the weather; agreement to a “compact of government” before landing; maintenance of the group as a separate colony; and, after struggling through poverty and the rigors of their new location to survive, the founding of other towns apart from the earliest settlements. ²

Indeed, there are certain parallels to be drawn between both the collective memory of, and motivation for, the migration of these Zoroastrians from Iran sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries, and the Pilgrims from Britain who made the difficult sea voyage to the east coast of America some seven or eight hundred years later. The historical mythologizing of both “exodus” experiences emphasizes their religious impetus, while minimizing reference to any socioeconomic influences. It seems, however, that the desire to make a better living was probably as crucial to any decision to migrate as the quest for religious freedom. In each case, emigration brought new commercial opportunities.

From this perspective, the drive of British colonial expansion from the early seventeenth century to mid-eighteenth century in both the “West” and the “East” must be considered as a factor that encouraged English nonconformists to sail to the New World, as well as further Parsi migration from original settlements in the Gujarati hinterland to Bombay. ³ During this period, both groups set off to their new destinations with contractual obligations to British mercantile companies in hand, along with assurances of freedom of religion.

Parsis Arrive in Sanjan

A verse-story by a Parsi high priest named Bahman Kaikobad Sanjana from Navsari, Gujarat, narrates the various reasons for the Zoroastrian emigration from Iran to India shortly after the fall of the Sasanian Persians to the Arab Muslims in the mid-seventh century CE. This Parsi account was first printed in Persian in 1599. Titled Qesse-ye Sanjān, the “Story of Sanjan,” the text marks Sanjan, on the southernmost coast of Gujarat, as the initial landing place of the behdinān—those “of the good religion.” The Qesse-ye Sanjān is a rare internal Parsi Zoroastrian source from this early period, providing insight into Parsi self-definition at the time of its composition, and acting as a prototype for subsequent Parsi repositioning as they moved from Gujarat to Bombay, then elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent and to other countries. The story becomes a Parsi national epic, reflecting identity and ethos as understood in the late sixteenth century. ⁴

Modi noted parallels with accounts of the seventeenth-century English “Pilgrim” migration to America in the Qesse-ye Sanjān’s reminiscences of the “wondrous” rescue of the good religion. ⁵ The motivation for the departure of the original Zoroastrian “boat people” on the dangerous journey across the seas is given as the growing religious intolerance on the part of the Arab Muslims who now ruled their Iranian homeland. ⁶ This rationale underpins the Qesse narrative that when the last Sasanian Zoroastrian king, Yazdegerd III (r. 632–651 CE), was killed in Merv, both laity and priests went into hiding in the region of Kuhestan (literally, “a mountainous place”), leaving all “for sake of their Religion.” ⁷ The burden of payment of jizya, the annual poll tax due from non-Muslim subjects living under Islamic rule, was certainly oppressive. ⁸ In the late 720s, the Umayyad caliphate had promised to exempt Zoroastrian converts from the jizya, but when this did not happen, many returned to their original faith and rebelled. ⁹

The Qesse does not refer directly to such events, but relates that “a hundred years” after Yazdegerd’s death, the group from Kuhestan followed a “wise and virtuous man” to the Iranian port city of Hormuz, where they took the advice of a “wise dastūr” (Zoroastrian priest) and embarked with him on a boat to India. They landed on the island of Diu, tidally separated from the Kathiawar peninsula in Gujarat, and stayed there until the dastūr divined that they must leave for another place. Then, “full speed they sailed their boat to Gujarat,” being buffeted by a storm, until “God gave them succor in their difficulties” and the boat arrived in safe port. ¹⁰ The narrative once more emphasizes the refugees’ adherence to their faith when confronted with the local Hindu raja’s ambivalence toward them as they disembarked in Sanjan.

The port of arrival, on the Varol...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Arrivals: Parsis, Pilgrims and Puritans
• 2. “A Nice Morality” (1771–1798)
• 3. A Shawl Handkerchief and a Cabinet of Curiosities (1799–1806)
• 4. Merchant Princes, Missionaries and a Man-of-War (1807–1815)
• 5. A Passage to and from India (1816–1835)
• 6. Gods and Temples, Ice and the Whale (1836–1851)
• 7. Consuls, Industrial Innovations and a Walking Stick (1852–1865)
• 8. A Final Coda: Fragrant Memories?
• Back Matter