Parsi scholarship at this period—Introduction of the science of comparative philology among the Parsis—Textual criticism brings startling revelations for the Parsis—Back to the Gathas was the war-cry of the new school—A new theory to defend the Gathas from the accusation of dualism.
Indifferentism on the part of the Parsi youth arouses the proselytizing zeal of the Christian missionaries—Salient features of Zoroastrianism assailed by the missionaries—Parsi apologists meet the charges of their opponents by resorting to allegorical explanations—The outcome of this controversy.
Crusade against the non-Zoroastrian practices engrafted upon Zoroastrianism—The reformers protested against reciting their prayers parrotwise in an unintelligible language—The Avestan texts metamorphosed into an ungrammatical jargon—Too much ritualism protested the reformer—The progressives denounced the intercessory prayers for the dead—The good sense of the disputants saved the community from being split into sects.
Inquiring minds seek a deeper meaning of life—Parsi theosophists—Custodians of the only key to Zoroastrianism—The theosophists summarily rejected the method the philologist adopted in interpreting the sacred texts—Parsi theosophists as champions of the cause of orthodoxy—Avestan prayers, however unintelligible, are declared the most efficacious owing to their occult significance—Zoroastrianism in the light of theosophy—Zrvan Akarana as an impersonal God in the theosophic light—Zoroastrianism declared by the theosophic claim to be incomplete without the doctrine of transmigration of souls.
