The path is created by walking. By walking, you build the path, and if you look back, everything you see is only a sign of the steps you have taken. There are people in the world today whose steps will be permanent. They taught everyone that hard work and perseverance could make a difference. Today, the 7th of Mehr, we commemorate the memory of the late, mobed Khoabakhsh Yazdani on the 16th anniversary of his death. The mobed Khodabakhsh, the son of lady Firooz and Goshtasb Yazdani, left a good memory in his 82 years of prolific cultural life.<\/p>\n
Memoir commemorating the memories of this great man, entitled “In memory of Master Khodabakhsh”, the great man of the Gathas and the Shahnameh” by Soroush Mali from Yazd was published in Mehr 1384, in issue 122 of the weekly Amordad;<\/p>\n
Master Khodabakhsh was born in 1302 AH in the village of Allahbad. He spent his childhood and went to primary school in his hometown and helped his father in agriculture. At that time, the Akaber Association had established a school in Allahabad, Yazd, and made him the head and teacher of that school. His skill and hard work led Muslims from the surrounding areas of Allahabad, Zarach, and the suburbs to come to this school to learn science and gain knowledge.\u00a0 It was from then that the name “master” was given to this learned man. Even now, most Muslims from neighboring villages often say that everything they have learned was from Master Khodabakhsh. He often even taught the Quran. Finally, after forty years as a teacher, he retired in 1359. He received his mobed’s degree from the Mobed Research Center in Yazd, after teaching religious texts and Avesta in the classes of Dinyari School in Yazd. While he was active as a trainer of the Mobeds and mobedyars in Yazd, he was also in charge of Maryamabad and other areas of Yazd province for a long time.<\/p>\n
For the first time in Maryamabad, he taught the residents the Gathas and his pupils won awards in many Manthra competitions in Tehran. In Bahman 1366 AH, for the first time in Yazd, he started having classes on the recitation of Shahnameh, in Maryamabad, in which 65 young, middle-aged and senior students participated, and many would come to his class from other Zoroastrian neighborhoods. For over 10 years he gave commentary on the full Shahnameh and also its appendixes from beginning to the end, verse by verse and word by word, which is unique in its right. I was one of his students. It was only a pity that out of 65 participants in these ten years, the number of teenagers and young people decreased each time until the number of class attendees reached 15, all of whom were elderly and middle-aged. It is a kind of tragedy for the youth; it is worthwhile for Amordad to stress more on the youth and encourage them to read Shahnameh and national and patriotic literature.<\/p>\n
Shahnameh is our living national and religious document, we should be proud of it and cherish it, and try to spread its messages and promote its use. Shahnameh recognizes and praises the brave and good women of its legends, like Gordafarid, Rudabeh, Manijeh, Tahmineh and Sepidvand, and at the same time degrades the unworthy women like Soodabeh, who caused the death of Siavash.<\/p>\n
Shahnameh is uniformly written in Persian, which includes Persian, Pahlavi, and even Avestan texts. In this voluminous book, we learned from Master Khodabakhsh that out of 60,000 verses in Shahnameh, only half of one line does not have any dot, and the rest all have dots.<\/p>\n
In his class, often an argument would heat up over a line of a verse, and experts in Shahnameh and professors in Yazd universities were asked to help find a convincing answer regarding that particular line.\u00a0 I remember that a 40-years-old student in the class, mr Keykhosrow Mavandadiw, was so interested in the Shahnameh that he came to class every week from Qasemabad, whether winter or summer, to learn from this master, who recited and interpreted the Shahnameh in such a pleasant tone. Then, one day, he broke his leg in an accident. Because of his great love in Shahnameh and since he couldn’t attend the classes, we all decided to have the class in his house, with our teacher, Master Khodabakhsh. About 27-30 students went to Kheykhosrow’s house very week for about 3 months, until his leg healed and he could come back to class. The late Khodabakhsh created such interest in us that is rare to find, and I am requesting you to introduce this example of kindness and affection to the youth and to our fellow Zoroastrians.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(1) Hoosht: Assistant Priest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The path is created by walking. By walking, you build the path, and if you look back, everything you see is only a sign of the steps you have taken. There are people in the world today whose steps will be permanent. They taught everyone that hard work and perseverance could make a difference. Today, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zoroastrians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/93427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}