Frashogard

Roj Ava Mah Amardad, 1378 Yz.

Several of my friends have called me to ask whether I was going to respond to a couple of articles published in Jame Jamshed weekly over the last two weeks, attacking my article on prohibition of donation of body parts after death.

I strongly believe that every individual has the right to hold an opinion, specially if it does not correspond to my own views on the subject. In an age where religious learning is almost non-existent, my writings and articles are to be used as tools to arrive at a decision after considering the facts as given in our religion. I do not have any hold over an individual and nor can I say that my view is the only view, although I definitely believe that my view is the RIGHT view from the point of our religion and its pristine teachings.

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How the power of our Manthra prayers and the Amal of a revered priest conquered the toughest of evil spirits

Roj Govad Mah Tir, 1378 Yz.

In my earlier post on Bhulki Daakan, we saw how the Parsis of Navsari used the services of a Hindu exorcist to rid the possession of a young Parsi maiden from the clutches of an evil witch. Many readers wrote back to ask as to why the Parsis did not use the services of the many pious and experienced Mobeds of Navsari to cure Dhunmai. I have no answer to that question, since I was merely reporting on the incident which happened more than a century ago. However, there is another well known incident of a similar type, where the services of a revered Mobed Saheb were used with amazing results. This is the story of Dastur Pesuji of Surat.

This incident took place in Surat more than 200 years ago. As with stories handed down through the oral tradition, it is difficult to put an exact date to the events, but definitely this is quite an old episode, somewhere around the time when the British were first making inroads into west India. Surat, at that time was under Mughal rule and the local affairs were looked after by a Nawab, who reported to the Mughal emperor.

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The strange incident of mind and body possession in the life of Bai Dhunmai Merwanji Katrak, nee Hathiram

Roj Sarosh Mah Tir, 1378 Yz.

The remembrance of our grandparents and family elders telling us strange and almost impossible to believe stories of the past often form the most fond memories of our childhood and days of innocence. How we used to sit at their feet and listen in awe at the most outlandish of tales and imbibe the deep lessons of morality and human decency from them! How we used to be terrified of the evil and horrible villains of these stories, making our nightly trip to the toilet an act of extreme bravery! And how we used to pester our elders to repeat the same story again and again, listening to those almost hypnotic words, in the peculiar village dialect that all Parsis of those times used!

One such story often told was of Bhulki Daakan, an evil witch and her

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