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No one knows what the Gathas mean…There are so many different translations… Helmut Humbach’s four translations present different understandings of the same material,” says Dr Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina who was scheduled to start as a lecturer in the department of religious studies at Stanford University in January 2011. Hence the former research associate at Harvard University has concentrated on what scholar priests of Sasanian times understood of the Gathas as a "repository  of everything” and has discovered that their conception  is completely different from what modern scholars have thought.

Vevaina explains his basic technique as taking a key word and dilating on it by importing its meaning from other scriptural sources like the Vendidad. This reading which he describes as "quasi mystical, taking the hook from one text and joining it to another text,” is based on the idea that "there is no unique text,” that every text is a continuation of past narratives. He describes this as a "scientific form of understanding traditional analysis. My job is to claim that this is what they (the Sasanian clerics) thought.”

Every other religious tradition treats the traditional interpretation of its scriptures with tremendous respect, says Vevaina, admitting that the same may not apply fully to Zoroastrian studies. Hence in academic circles there is respect for the work he is doing, he mentioned to Parsiana in the course of an interview on September 27, 2010. Yale University’s Prof Stanley Insler, whose translation of the Gathas has become standard reference material for North American Zoroastrians, has been "very supportive,” says Vevaina.

While at Harvard, Vevaina worked on two books which are due for publication in 2011-12. In one he concentrates on the "two powerful value systems encoded in the Pahlavi texts: radih (generosity) and rastih (truth) — "cardinal virtues repeated from the Gathas to present times, the transmission of historical values” accepted by Parsis and Iranians alike. "Ancient people saw these encapsulated in rituals. Social morality and ritual morality together constitute moral totality all through the centuries,” says the scholar, emphasizing that this is the Zoroastrian version of what is true of all ritually based traditions. "Ritual does not have to be thought of as mindless and repetitive,” he notes, explaining that the sanctity of a ritual creates the world as it is supposed to be.

"Most people live their religious identity but don’t know what it means. One thousand years ago (Zoroastrianism) was a dominant force. The scholar priests knew what the practices meant. Now the burden of interpretation falls on scholars.” There are questions of orthodoxy and transmission of past knowledge and the problem of understanding what we have received from the past. 

Zoroastrian studies are dominated by social scholars and religious scholars — there is not much input from other disciplines, states Vevaina. All the documents that we have inherited are the surviving works of priests, essentially religious in theme. We don’t really have secular literature. Describing this as a "fundamentally historiographic problem,” the scholar adds, "How do you study the history when the material available is so fragmented? A narrow, simplified view of history is very damaging to our sense of self and our community identity. Knowledge is power and if knowledge is limited, power is very limited. We are in the marketplace of ideas and the way we explain tradition and identity to others, good thoughts, good words, good deeds, is fundamental but there is so much more.”

The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Zoroastrianism, designed for university graduates and undergraduates as well as knowledgeable lay persons, is the second book philologist Vevaina is working on with co-editor Michael Stausberg, a historian of repute. The two editors with their complementary skill sets are collating the work of 35 scholars who together present Zoroastrianism thematically over the years. It is hoped that the new material they bring forth will allow professionals working on other themes to plug into the Zoroastrian context.

According to Vevaina, the new generation of scholars has got away from the notion of total objectivity. "Everything is subjective, even earlier interpretations. Older scholars thought they were on firm ground and studied others who they thought were on firm ground. But we recognize that there is no firm ground. We have gone past (examining) whether claims of truth are true or not. We are more interested in knowing how the claim of truth is constructed…”

In the context of the conversion controversy Vevaina says, "Nobody has assembled all the evidence. It has been done only piecemeal. There is some sense that Zoroastrianism has an ethnic component but in the historical context conversions have occurred. Empires are about command, control and taxation revenues. They used Zoroastrianism to justify political ambitions…We have to recognize that historical facts provide ammunition to both sides,” he notes, adding, "In Sasanian times priests and rulers worked together but were also rivals. The contest continues between the secular trustees of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) and the priestly community!” he smiles.

The son of Sorab and Tinaz (née Driver) migrated to the US with his parents and sister Leilah at the age of 12 in 1988, was a foreign student in Beijing and Harpin in the Peoples’ Republic of China for two years (1996-97) before completing his Bachelor of Arts in international relations from Tufts University in 1998. A Masters degree from Harvard in Iranian and Persian Studies in 2003 was followed by a PhD, also from Harvard in 2007. His dissertation titled "Studies in Zoroastrian Exegesis and Hermeneutics with a Critical Edition of the Sudgar Nask of Denkard Book 9” which won him high distinction was pursued under Norwegian professor Prods Oktor Skjaervo. An instructor, lecturer and teaching fellow at Harvard, the first of the two books that Vevaina hopes to see published shortly is based on this dissertation.

This immersion in Zoroastrian and Iranian studies is however only partly the result of family interests. Growing up in a "pretty secular family, especially on dad’s side,” the first seeds of interest were planted by his maternal grandmother Zarrin Driver who had studied Persian in college and retold stories of the Shahnameh and of Zarathushtra’s influence, Vevaina recalled. His grandfather Phiroze Driver was "a proud Parsi,” he told us. It was however two chance comments that had the most impact. While playing tennis with another kid in his initial years in the States, he was asked, "What are you?” The more telling occasion was a comment by a masters student of anthropology in China where Vevaina was pursuing Chinese studies and international relations: "When I said no one was doing Zoroastrian studies he asked, ‘Why not you?’”

 As  a child Vevaina says he had attended Khojeste Mistree’s classes at Pasta Lane and had played a bit part as one of the children in the Zubin Mehta-Mistree starrer On Wings of Fire so he says he ran the idea past Mistree. "He sent me to scholar James Russell at Harvard. Khojeste was very encouraging, did a lot for me.”

Vevaina’s string of awards and fellowships is crowned by the US Federal government’s National Council for the Humanities’ National Endowment  Fellowship, in 2010. The polyglot — his CV lists Old and Young Avestan, Old Persian, Middle Persian, New Persian, Bactrian, Sogdian, Sanskrit, Tocharian, Chinese, French (reading), German (reading), Gujarati (comprehension) —  has published many an erudite article in research journals. He begins 2011 at Stanford University thanks to Farokh Billimoria, a California based venture capitalist who works for Iranian businessman Jamshid Varza, and the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America (FEZANA). Initially a part time appointment, it has been stepped up to full time. Such a community initiative in academics is not very common, Vevaina assures us.

Though there is "a giant difference in terms of sophistication in presentation,” between Western and Parsi scholars, Vevaina acknowledges the latter’s "fantastic amount of knowledge.” Why then is the community so fixated on narrow topics? he wonders. The community’s divisive politics everywhere in the world, people’s entrenched positions, worry him even though he is intellectually aware that it is a characteristic of small communities "because the stakes are very high when you are small and emotional.” On the question of demographics he attributes the diminishing size of the community in Bombay to emigration and expects birth and death rates to decline further. "But are there fewer Parsis in the world?” he counters. 

With his value system emphasizing the survival of knowledge about the community, Vevaina would like at least a couple of young Zoroastrians in each generation to take to the professional study of sociology and/or theology. Entrepreneurship will not build knowledge, argues the scholar who is fond of travel and tennis, enjoys watching movies and has an eclectic taste in music.