Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/534

Parsi Protestants and were charged with thinking in terms of Christianity. They were said to be fired by the sole ambition of being original, and of setting at naught the achievements of their elders for the last three thousand years. The reformers replied that they were simply looking to antiquity for models for their conduct and were profiting solely by the vast experience of the past. But at the same time, they rejoined, the orthodox should remember that the ancients had tackled the religious and ceremonial questions that arose in their own days according to light that had prevailed in the past. Those of that day had not done the thinking for all times to come, with injunctions to the future generations to act in strict accordance with them. They alone had not the monopoly to think, and had not given the final mandate to acquiesce in all that they had believed. Besides, a return to the past could not bring unalloyed happiness to the Parsis in the present times. The community, it was urged, cannot afford to transplant itself back to the age of the Vendidad. There was no use sticking to outworn forms and seeking to give them a new life. It was futile to attempt to support delusions, and the orthodox, they said, should not throw all possible shackles in the way of progress by hampering and paralyzing the well-meant efforts of the new school.

Such, in brief form, is the story of the opening of the conflict between conservative and free thought among the Parsis in India, which rent the community into two sections. The rival parties, however, did not make any formal division between themselves. The reformers did not venture to contemplate so complete a break with the orthodox as would culminate in the establishment of a reformed Church. The orthodox could not excommunicate the reformers even if they would. The orthodox had to content themselves with condemning the reformers, and the reformers by satrizing the orthodox. Even to-day the main disputes over some of these vital problems remain much the same as they were nine decades ago, and the battle goes on, still to be won.