Place · Parsi landing memorial · India
Sanjan Sthambh
Also known as Sanjan, Zoroastrian landing memorial
The Sanjan Column memorial at Sanjan village in Valsad district, Gujarat — a 1920 memorial pillar marking the traditional landing site of the first Parsi refugees from Umayyad Iran, who arrived at Sanjan around 721 CE after their flight from Islamic persecution. The pillar was erected in 1920 by the Parsi Zoroastrian community under the patronage of Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy and the Wadia family on the 1,200th anniversary of the Parsi arrival. The Sanjan Column stands 32 feet high with inscribed Parsi history on all four sides. The adjacent Sanjan Zoroastrian memorial park preserves archaeological remains of the original 8-century Parsi settlement. The Parsi arrival narrative — recorded in the 16-century Qissa-i Sanjan by Bahman Kaikobad Sanjana — holds that the Zoroastrians negotiated refuge with the local Hindu king Jadi Rana through the famous milk-and-sugar parable.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.186, 72.842
Connections (2)
- Companion in the same setSanjan
The Sanjan Sthambh was raised on the Gujarat coast in 1920 to mark the Parsi landing, more than a thousand years after the date it commemorates and six centuries after the Qissa-i Sanjan, the only text that describes the event, was written. It is a community putting a monument on a founding story it knows it cannot document, and saying so on the pillar itself, which is rarer than the practice of doing it.
- Present atZoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism's Indian history begins at Sanjan, where the Parsis landed in 936 CE under Jadi Rana.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sanjan”. Parsi Panchayat records; John Hinnells, The Zoroastrian Diaspora.
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