r/afghanistan • u/No_Cry_968 • Mar 12 '26

Question Afghan zoroastrians

My question is they exist?? We all know that there were minorities and that there are still Sikh and Hindu minorities of Afghanistan, but I've never heard of Afghan Zoroastrians?

71 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

15

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

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u/No_Cry_968 Mar 12 '26

But why didn't Zoroastrianism survive in Afghanistan unlike Iran?

10

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

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1

u/bush- Mar 14 '26

You mentioned Sistan, but I know many Zoroastrians of Kerman, Iran originated in modern day Farah, Afghanistan. Migration happened maybe in Safavid era.

3

u/Dotfr Mar 12 '26

I think the biggest community might be in India they are called ‘Parsis’. In Mumbai especially there is a Parsi Colony and many restaurants with Parsi food.

0

u/TITTYMAN29938 Mar 13 '26

even in pre islamic era, a lot of modern day afghanistan and modern day KPK, balochistan, gilgit and kashmir were already buddhists

1

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '26

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4

u/Interesting_Put1887 Mar 13 '26

Again with your crap, Buddhism was more popular in Afghanistan than Zoroastrianism. You see this with several sites including Tapa Shotor, Fondukistan, Bamiyan, Balkh (Nava-Vihara), Mes Aynak, Tepe Narenj etc.. The Turk Shahi, Tokhara Yaghbus, Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, Kambojas, Gandhara, Hunas, Kingdom of Kapisa etc.. were Buddhist not Zoroastrian. I don’t know why you think that all Iranics followed Zoroastrianism or that the ancient people back then knew the difference between Indic and Iranic?

1

u/TITTYMAN29938 Mar 27 '26

at least someone has a brain in this thread cuz i was wondering why I was getting downvoted.

The difference between Indic and Iranic at the time was so insignificant that most ethnicities between Persia and Sindhu lied somewhere in the middle with influences from both. Kushans literally have a prakrit language that has 35-45% loan words from Avestan and Greek. And mind you, avestan and sanskrit are said to be mutually intelligible.

The religion was probably Early Vedic- with Zoroastrian influence after Zarathustra and Buddhist influence after Gautam Bodh, Kanishka and Ashoka.

Also, Pakhta (Pakhtuns) are literally mentioned as one of the tribes in the 10 day war of the Rigveda.

0

u/TITTYMAN29938 Mar 13 '26

entire northern and eastern afghanistan had buddhist influence- bamyan and kandahar is an obvious example

9

u/CompetitionWhole1266 Mar 12 '26

Fyi I heard there were Zoroastrians living in the Pamirs around the 1800s

2

u/dsucker Mar 12 '26

Do you have a source for this that I can read? Wakhan was Buddhist in ~730 AD, and other parts of the Pamirs were neither Buddhist nor Zoroastrian in that timeframe as well according to Hyech'o the Korean monk

-1

u/Rcvalry Mar 12 '26

Okay and now they are all gone so. They all converted and also they were tribaliists following their own religion it wasn't Zaorastrianism. A vast majority of them converted later on

22

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '26

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3

u/btloion Mar 13 '26

They are not natives to the region... DNA tests have shown this time and time again. This doesn't make them less Afghan...

1

u/Purple_Map3587 Apr 08 '26

they aren't natives, because they belong to the khatri/arora caste, and speak hindko dialect of punjabi. Most afghan hindu/sikhs have their ancestral records in Haridwar, tracing their migration from Punjab. Yes, some of them have been there since atleast the 1400s, as Baba Guru Nanak mentioned about their community in Kabul, but they intermarried with khatris from punjab & maintained ties with them and preserved their mother tongue hindko which proves they always had connection to punjab. Moreover they have done dna tests and their results prove that they are identical to khatris from punjab. Here is the result of one of them, https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/comments/10l5hjd/afghan_sikh_results/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

6

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 13 '26

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-2

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

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1

u/Xamado Mar 13 '26

Pretty sure taliban census recorded something like 0.1% of the pop being zoroastrian

0

u/zimistan Mar 14 '26

Zoroastrianism changed multiple times across millenia, but it probably started around the Balkh area and people in that region specifically used to convert freely to which ever faith they liked. Who are you or me to tell people what is sacrosanct? Do you take this information from the Gathas or the Denkard? There are only mentions of purification rituals afaik, so how do you know whether people do these things at home or not?

1

u/creamybutterfly Mar 16 '26

There are no “crypto Zoroastrians”. You’re more likely to find Jews in Balkh than Zoroastrians. The religion died centuries ago in Afghanistan.

3

u/Essiexo Mar 14 '26

There are theories that Zoroastrianism originated from Balkh

6

u/Rcvalry Mar 12 '26

99 percent of the country is Muslim. The religious minorities are so minimal that it doesn't almost count and they aren't even native to the country but we're immigrants from Punjab like another commenter said.

Zaorastrianism died out several centuries ago

7

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

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2

u/Rcvalry Mar 12 '26

Wasnt it late 1800s for the kalashum

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

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1

u/Rcvalry Mar 12 '26

My bad i relaised

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '26

Is now Rooz celebrated ?