Nowrooz Thread

[Ahmad]

Oh OK. Well, the school is called Parsi High School and the principal and others were Zoroastrian.
There is also a megarich Parsi clan called the Avaris who are also Zoroastrian.
So, I think all Parsis in Pakistan are probably Zoroastrian.

About the Khan part, I was quite confused the first time I met a dyed-in-the-wool Gujarati Hindu Indian called Khan.

lol, you know what, when i meet some paksitanis the first time, and when they hear i am from afghanistan, they straightawy think i am pashtoon and they call me khan, both misconception is funny and face it time to time.

 

[angeldust]

mmm

no, parsi is ethnicty, it could be anyone, zroroastrians, muslim etc. Parsi might mean zoroastrian in sub continent, but that is not true. There is another misconception among pakistanis and indians that anybody who has name as khan, they call him pashtoon.

The genesis of the word Parsi has an ethno-geographic connotation to describe the first wave of Zoroastrians who came to India from 700 to 900 AD. The name comes from the fact that most of these were from the Pars region of Persia. Thus for Parsis the world over, their motherland remains India, and their mother-tongue gujarati. The language of the Khorde Avesta is something they use only in prayer and mostly by rote sadly. The Zoroastrians who came much later, from the 17- and 1800s, are called Irani Zoroastrians, and they still speak Persian (a form of dari I think).

 

[Developereo]

lol, you know what, when i meet some paksitanis the first time, and when they hear i am from afghanistan, they straightawy think i am pashtoon and they call me khan, both misconception is funny and face it time to time.

Yeah, that's probably most (all?) Afghan refugees in Pakistan's cities are Pakhtuns.
The Afghan Hazaras etc. probably find local communities in Pakistan's rural north and don't go to the big cities.

PS. I just remembered I didn't do my A levels at BVS. I left Pakistan (and BVS) a few years earlier and returned later to a different school. It's all a bit confused...

The genesis of the word Parsi has an ethno-geographic connotation to describe the first wave of Zoroastrians who came to India from 700 to 900 AD. The name comes from the fact that most of these were from the Pars region of Persia. Thus for Parsis the world over, their motherland remains India, and their mother-tongue gujarati. The language of the Khorde Avesta is something they use only in prayer and mostly by rote sadly. The Zoroastrians who came much later, from the 17- and 1800s, are called Irani Zoroastrians, and they still speak Persian (a form of dari I think).

That makes sense. All the Parsis I have known in Pakistan spoke Gujarati.

 

[madooxno9]

 

[TheStrantrunCurve]

Oh OK. Well, the school is called Parsi High School and the principal and others were Zoroastrian.
There is also a megarich Parsi clan called the Avaris who are also Zoroastrian.
So, I think all Parsis in Pakistan are probably Zoroastrian.

About the Khan part, I was quite confused the first time I met a dyed-in-the-wool Gujarati Hindu Indian called Khan.

But I agree that, in Pakistan, the term "Khan sahib" is almost a synonym for Pakhtun.

Almost all the indian muslims i met have their surnames Khan, It has become a fad in india.

 

[Ahmad]

Khan is basically a male name and has nothing to do with any specific people. it is widely used in the region.

 

[Ahmad]

 

[TheStrantrunCurve]

Khan is basically a male name and has nothing to do with any specific people. it is widely used in the region.

i think it has to do with some one's identity, In pakistan it is used mostly by pushtoons but in india whether it is a hyderabadi, delhite or from mumbai most muslim have named themselves khan.

 

[Ahmad]

i think it has to do with some one's identity, In pakistan it is used mostly by pushtoons but in india whether it is a hyderabadi, delhite or from mumbai most muslim have named themselves khan.

yes, but it doesnt mean khan is a name specifically for pashtoons, i have noticed pakistanis and also indians call pashtoons khan.

 

[Roybot]

i think it has to do with some one's identity, In pakistan it is used mostly by pushtoons but in india whether it is a hyderabadi, delhite or from mumbai most muslim have named themselves khan.

Thats not true. When I was in school back in India, about 30% of my classmates were Muslims, and as far as I remember only two of them"Iqbal Mansoor Khan" and "Talha Abid Khan " had Khan as surname, but they were Afghan not Indian. You find Indian Muslims from different areas with Khan as their surname , because there is no specific "ancestral region" in India for them. Back in the days they might have worked in the courts/armies of various Nawabs and Kings and hence settled in different regions of India.

 

[Ahmad]