Videography-based documentation of the language of Parsis in Gujarat and Maharashtra by Anton Zykov

Anton Zykov, a Parzor researcher and PhD Candidate at Inalco (Paris) and Goethe-Universität (Frankfurt) has been working on a collection of recordings of the Parsi language spoken exclusively by the Zoroastrian community living in India, refered as Parsis. The recordings encompass various unique Parsi-Zoroastrian rites de passages: initiation (navjote), marriage (arusi), and funeral (dakhmenashini) rituals, the latter exclusively performed by few hereditary corpse-bearers (khandiyars and nasusalars). The collection also has daily conversations as well naturally generated discourses from difference gender, socio-economic, geographical and age dimensions of the Parsi community.

The recordings have been collected in various districts (zilās) of Gujarat, namely:

1) Navsari district

2) Surat district

3) Ahmedabad district

4) Dang district

5) Valsad district

6) Bharuch district

7) Vadodara district

8) Tapi district

Smaller part of the collection was gathered in the two cities/towns located in the neighbouring state of Maharashtra:

1) Mumbai

2) Dahanu

As of May 2019, the collection contains 15 videos of various lifecycle rituals and lifestyle occasions with an overall duration of 5.5 hours. These can be divided into two genres:

• 1. Parsi religious rituals (3 hours)

• 2. Parsi day-to-day discourses (2.5 hours)

Learn more through the Endangered Languages Archive Project.