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Inquiring minds seek a deeper meaning of life. At this period of transition, when the old practices seemed to have spent their force, and the younger generation was drifting towards indifference in religious matters, there were other forces at work which heralded the rise of a new class of dissenters. Those of a prosaic and matter-of-fact turn of mind in the community had steadily doubted the statements that did not admit of a rational justification, and refused to believe in anything mysterious and mystical in religion. But human life cannot altogether be stripped of mystery. Rationalism is not the whole of human nature. Besides, the state of doubts and disbeliefs that prevailed in the community could not last long. Man is essentially a religious being. He feels an inherent need in himself for some form of religious belief which would satisfy the yearnings of his spirit—that irrepressible heart-hunger of the human soul.

The Parsi priesthood, as custodians of the conscience of the community, zealously guarded and conserved the dogmatic teachings and traditions, but they were unable to work for the adaptation of the traditional material to the contemporary situation. They were incapable, at the time, of helping the community in its religious crisis. Persons who thought that the rationalism of the new school ignored an essential part of human nature when it discarded the emotional side of man, to which man was indebted for some of his noblest virtues, yearned for new light. If that light did not come from within, they would welcome it from without. At this juncture the Theosophical Society opened its propaganda in India, and a number of Parsis eagerly embraced the movement.

Parsi theosophists. In the early eighties of the last century the Parsi members of the Theosophical Society entered the arena of religious controversy and gave new zest to it. They became a potent factor in shaping the religious beliefs of a section of the