 We hope that, in the future, we will have years of experience in the future. Okay good evening, good evening. to all of you, students, scholars, friends and distinguished guests. And welcome to the first Sharpogee Palangii Memorial Lecture. And we hope this will become something, become established as a flagship event for the Institute going forward. a cymdeithas, cyd-godd, gyda haes a gyllid cyrindig sy'n gystafod i Cyfrannu Cymru ac mae hyn ymd demonstrateb ydyn nhw yn ei wneud fod yn colliad i gael eich cyfrannu cyfrannu ei meidio. Byddwyd, y wych sy'n cyfrannu cyfnodol pan enw y meddwl i'r gyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu. Cymdau gyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu cilydd, yma rydych chi'n mynd i gael yn fynd iddyn nhw sefydlu a gyflwyno ff130 yr ysgolwysgol ffordd yma rhywg ddigon ffordd i gydlanddo i gael gwyfyrddol i gyd ymddiadol, i gŷrd yn oed. Yn gyflwyno'r gwheiddiadau â ei ffordd yn i'w ffwylol, oedd efallai y ffordd i gael ymddangos am ddysgu a ni'n gwyfydol, Rhyw Yn Nairaimann. Yn oed Nairaimann yw elun yn gweld ei hwn oedd yn dweud o'r ysgolwyr yn ymddangos. Mae cyfwyn iddyn nhw i ddwy i'r bethaua gyda Feirwyr yn Yn Ynol. from which he retired less than two years ago. Before that, he was solicitor-general of India, and before that at the age of just 37 was appointed senior council to the Supreme Court in India. And I should say here that the rules of the Supreme Court had to be amended to allow this appointment a bod hynny'n gwybod i'r awddiad o'r cyfnodol yn 45. Ond yn 2017, Dustus Narriman was recognised as one of the five world heroes by Access Now, a human rights organisation, for his concurring judgment in a case named the KS Puttoswami versus Union of India, and it was about recognising the right to privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. But the law isn't the only area of expertise and interest in Justice Narriman's portfolio for life, as I like to call it, as I saw when I looked through the many and varied topics he's lectured and published on over the years. And I mentioned them, I mentioned just a few of them here. I mean, they go on for pages and pages. An ardent lover of music and a reader of history, he's lectured on the life of Beethoven, musings on music, World War II, the Victor rights history, and keynote lectures on great women in history and Mahatma Gandhi and mediation. Justice Narriman is an authority on the Zoroastrian religion to which he belongs. He became an ordained priest and did his nava at the Bandra Agiari in Mumbai. Subject to his knowledge, sorry, testament to his knowledge, are two out of the three of his books, The Inner Fire, Faith, Choice and Modern Day Living in Zoroastrianism, and another one, Zoroastrianism in Other Faiths. And his third book, though it could refer to Zoroastrianism, is in fact about the law, The Voice of Descent in the Court of the Last Resort. So tonight, Justice Narriman will delve into Imperial Iran and treat us to a lecture entitled, The Sasanian Empire, A Fire That Was Extinguished. So please join me in welcoming. Thank you, Sarah. Mr and Mrs Shapur mystery, a mystery family. Lord Billy Moria and my dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to go through 425 years of Persian history in a flash. 45 minutes being a flash. To begin at the beginning, we have five Persian dynasties. Who of which are spoken of in the shana men. The Peshda Danian and the Cayanian and the Cayanian dynasty. Had a king called Kavi Vistast. Who was the king who Zarathustra actually converted to Zoroastrianism. It's after this dynasty that we have the famous Achaemenian dynasty. The first emperor being Cyrus the Great. Followed by his son, can be sees followed by the rest. The great all persons you have heard of followed by success, et cetera. After Alexander comes and takes over Persia. And the last Achaemenian empire is killed. That's the third. We then have a lull in Zoroastrian fortunes, so to speak. Because a general of Alexander called Seleucus then takes over. And you have what is called a Seleucid dynasty for a period of 130 years. It is after this dynasty that you then have starting from roughly 224 BC. And carrying on till 224 AD. A third Zoroastrian dynasty, so to speak. Who were the Parthians. Now the Parthians believed strongly in Mitra, which is an offshoot of Zoroastrianism. And one of the empires called Volgos is the first. Actually got the entire Avesta together again after Alexander destroyed it. And compiled what is called the 21 Nusks. Of which only one remains with us today. The Vandida, which is therefore treated as sacred by the priests. It is important to remember that the Parthians kept the Romans at bay. And so did the Sassanians who followed them. Because at almost no point in our history. But the Romans allowed to extend the eastern part of their empire beyond the Tigris River. And we have a famous battle of Karai, which is fought in 53 BC. Where one of the triumphs when called Crassus. Has an entire army destroyed by the Parthians. And as a result, the Romans appeared to have accepted Mitra then as their god. But then all this is the subject matter of other lectures. Coming to the Sassanian dynasty. We find that the founder is a man called Adesha the first. He happened to be a priest. And he was the son of a person called Papak. Who was the king of our province at that time, Fars. And he finally defeated the last Parthian emperor who was under one the fifth. And a battle called the Battle of Hormizdigan in 224 AD. Having defeated him, he promptly married his daughter. Now, in order to ensure dynastic succession. This is something that has happened in the past. Daraeus the great, if you remember. Married Cyrus the great's daughter. Atosa. And ultimately selected Xerxes was one of his youngest sons. Only because she was from Atosa. So that he would be legitimate in the sense of continuing the old dynasty as well. This happened here in England as well. Henry VII founded the Tudor dynasty. Had a weak link to the Lancastrian branch of Edward III. And his son John of Gaon, who was the Duke of Lancaster. And after the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. He in turn went and married Elizabeth of York, who was the last in the Yorkist line. So that ultimately he could cement his dynasty. So Aresha did exactly this. But then the ramification was. That the lady wished to poison him for having killed her father. She was pregnant with child. And. She attempted the poison, the attempt to poison. And ultimately was found out unfortunately. And ordered sentence sentence to order to be sentenced to death. The major, however, saved her because of a child. And they kept her and the child away from the emperor. The emperor then had this young boy, Shapur, as he was called. Attend court only at age seven. And when he attended court, it was obvious that he was fit to be the next emperor. And as a matter of fact. Aresha did something very smart because just before he died. He co-opted him as a co-ruler. Now doing that is a very smart thing because when you have many sons and daughters. You either have civil war in which everybody kills everybody. Or you do something like this. You co-opt somebody and say, this person will be co-emperor, which means. Henry II did it here in England, which is eldest son. But then the eldest son predestined. Anyway. Shapur also turned out to be great emperor, but more of him a little later. Aresha was very keen to establish the importance of the Zoroastrian religion. And this he did in a unique way. He asked one of the priests, a man called Arenda Viraf, to go into a trance. This priest actually took something, went into a trance. Supposed to have left his body for seven days and nights. And then visited heaven, hell, purgatory. And described each one of them in great detail. And then finally came back after seven days and nights. To announce that people can get into heaven only if they live. By the Zoroastrian triad of good thoughts, good words and good deeds. Interestingly, he described God as a being of light. And said that he heard the voice of God as well. Now Arenda Viraf started a new empire. He had Parthia. And he added to Parthia, a part of the Kushan empire. Which existed towards the northeast. Then a part of the Mongol empire, which existed towards the far northeast. And it went all the way to Bahrain. He also happened to annex Armenia. So it was a massive empire at the time. And all this was done in the space of about 16 years. Because he died in 248. Saying ascribed to him that you can't have power without an army. You can't have army without money. You can't have money without agriculture. And you cannot have agriculture without justice. Very interesting. Another great saying was that kingship is only one wheel of a chariot. The other wheel is equally important and is the wheel of the priest. So unless the king and the priest coalesce, the king is bound to fail. So Adeshal goes in 240. And in comes Shapur the Great. Shapur the Great is best known, if you people have been to Iran, by a huge rock carving where he sits on a charger. And he has three Roman emperors under him. He has Valerian in chains under him. He has Julius Philippus a little behind him. And behind Julius Philippus is Gaudian III. Three emperors that he defeated utterly. Of course he defeated them in the opposite to the direction in which they were. Gaudian III was defeated first. Julius Philippus next and Julian Philippus had to pay ransom. And after him was Valerian who was utterly defeated in about 258 AD. So here you had an emperor who was not only a bulwark against the Roman Empire, but like the later Parthians, a person who actually defeated Rome in battle repeatedly. He only met his match in a thing called Odonathias of Palmyra. He was the great husband of Zinobia, a very well-known queen of Palmyra. And that was the one defeat that he faced. Otherwise he was pretty much triumphant. Also at his time emerged a prophet called Mani. Now Mani was a person who thought that there is a synthesis between Buddhism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. And he turned around the light and darkness principle, the dualistic principle of Zoroastrianism to say that everything spiritual is light. Everything material is darkness. And it is a religion which shampooed at first encouraged. And thereafter did not so that he had to go out of the country in order to preach it. He preached it pretty successfully. Because we find that Saint Augustine, one of the great early Christian fathers, was actually a Manichaean before he saw the light. And this religion went on into the 13th century to influence people like the Cathars, the Albigensians, et cetera. And apparently became the state religion of the Uighurs at one point of time. Anyway, Mani was tolerated up to a point. And shampooed rain for a long period of 30 years and then died. Now after he died, three of his sons became emperors. Hormaz, a son became emperor for a year. And after him followed a son of a concubine called Beram I. Now apparently there was a precedent for this because in the Achavenian Empire, Darius Nothus, that is Darius II, was also a son of a concubine. It would be unthinkable in a country like England, for example, where you had James Duke of Monmouth, who was the illegitimate son of Charles II, who couldn't possibly aspire to the throne. James II, his brother came to the throne. And when he rebelled against James II, he was destroyed and killed. So what is important is that this gentleman had a long rail. He had a reign of about 18 years. And in that reign he was very lucky that Emperor Aurelian of Rome, who was a very powerful emperor, happened to die in 274 as a result of which the Achavenian Empire got saved for the first time. Under his son, an emperor called Caerys, equally powerful, also suddenly died. It was as if the stars were in favour of the Achavenian Empire continuing. But suddenly died in some thunderstorm. Otherwise again there had been trouble. And Beram II also had a long rail. But it was Beram I, who put money to death in a most horrible way. Because these arrested clergy at that point of time were very powerful. And then you had grandson Beram III, who ruled for a very short while, until great uncle Narsé now, who is the third brother who comes in. That is the third son of Shapur I. And he has a relatively short reign of eight years in which he has to battle a very formidable Roman emperor called Dioclation. And I don't know if all of you have heard of Dioclation because Dioclation devised a system by which Rome was then divided into four parts. You had the eastern part, you had the western part and you had an Augustus and a Caesar, so to speak, looking after these two parts, which were then further subdivided. Now, when he was Augustus, his Caesar was a man called Galerion. And this gentleman Narsé went to war with Galerion and was successful in the beginning, got beaten in the end, but then negotiated a truest wit lasted for a long time. He also decided to do a Henry VIII, if I may say so, because he took over the clergy and then said, I am the head of the church now. The chief mobbett was dismissed. And after a reign of about eight years, he finally abdicated. Strangely enough, so did Dioclation. And after he abdicated, he had a son called Hormuz II, who again ruled for a short period, about five years. And Hormuz II again happened to be a beneficent monarch. And justice at his time was at its zenith, because in the ordinary courts of law, a poor man could fight a rich man and succeed is how the chroniclers put it, which is a great thing. And after Hormuz II, you then had something which is unique only to Sasainian rulership. You had Shapur II, who had a long reign of 70 years, from 309 AD to 379 AD. He was actually crowned in his mother's stomach in Vitiro, so to speak. The imperial diadem was placed on the mother's stomach because the Meja at that point of time had pronounced that not only is this a boy, but the stars are such that he'll be one of our greatest rulers. So all his older brothers were over. And Shapur II had a regency, therefore, of 15 years, after which he did indeed become one of the most powerful and great monarchs of the Sasainian empire. Now, he in turn had many brushes with Rome. He had a brush with Constantius II and at a battle called the Battle of Sigara in 244 AD, the definitive. He had another brush with a great man called Julian the Apostate, who all of you must have heard of. And it was his fortune that Julian the Apostate, like the other Roman emperors, Cares, et cetera, also happened to die suddenly and unexpectedly. So that his entire battle with Rome was victorious like Shapur I. His period, again, boasted of a remarkable chief priest, a man called Adderbad Maraspan. Now, Adderbad Maraspan was somebody who, like Ardavira, was appointed by the king to take molten metal on his breast, so to speak, and prove that the Zorestian religion was a religion to belong to and is supposed to have done that in public and escaped unhurt. He not only compiled the Kasti prayer, which is the prayer that perceives prayer every single day. And mind you, this Kasti prayer is a compilation in what sense? You have two verses which are picked up from what Zorester himself said. After these two, you have a full prayer in Pellavi, which was the spoken language of his day, which was composed by him, which is what we call the Ahura Mazda Khadai prayer, in which you have 11 forms of evil. And he freshes out these 11 forms. Who are very interesting? Those who are willfully deaf and willfully blind, forms of evil. And he repeats the word Darwand twice. Now a Darwand is a person who goes away from the Zorestian faith. So it was very important for him as head of the clergy to say this is the worst form of evil. Never go away from the faith. And finally, in the confession of the faith, what he preaches is very important, one nonviolence. Swaths must always be sheathed, never used. And self-ractifice, a part of, of course, from living by the path of Asha, which is the part of school. So you had this remarkable chief priest who spread the faith like nobody else. Of course, I must tell you that Zorestianism, though a proselytising religion, was never forced down anybody except at one point, which I'll come to in a short while. But it flourished as the empire flourished under this very great emperor, Shapur II. Now, after Shapur II, who, as I told you, ruled from 309 to 379, discount the first 15 years, in 379 appoints a brother, and this is also unique. He doesn't appoint him as guardian of his child, who was a minor child. He appoints him full-fledged king, but tells him that you must abdicate the throne the moment this boy becomes 15. And that boy happened to be Shapur III. So Aresha II comes in on this condition, which is, I think, a unique condition in world history. And he rules for about six years. And after the six-year rule, he's murdered. So he wasn't exactly tested as to whether he would have abdicated or wouldn't once he tested. Now, after this man comes a short rule of Shapur III, the only great thing that happened in his rule was Armenia got partitioned, apart from this very little that happened. And after Shapur III, you now come to another set of Sasenians who are, again, very, very interesting for different reasons. You have one son who is Bairam IV first. He has a relatively long rule, and he's perhaps the only Sasenian king who was so disliked by everybody that he was imprisoned and actually murdered by his own army. After him, you had a brother called Yazdegard I, the man who founded Yazd, the city of Yazd. Yazdegard I was a remarkable ruler. The first thing he did was to marry the Jewish patriarch's daughter. Now, that brings in King Xhaxiz in Esther. I'm sure all of you must have read the Old Testament and the book of Esther in it. Now, Esther happens to be a Persian name, even though it's in the Old Testament. And it's the name of Xhaxiz's queen. Xhaxiz gave her this name, which was a Persian name. She was a Jewish lady called Hadasah. And she was the niece of a Jew called Mordechai. Now, the Esther story is an interesting one because a traditional enemy of the Jews, the Amalekais, had in them a champion called Haman. And Haman went and poisoned Xhaxiz into issuing a decree saying that on the 13th of order of a particular year, all Jewish lives are forfeit because they are persons who do not bow to you as emperor. Esther comes in, explains to the king that this man is misled him, which leads to the famous biblical expression, the laws of the Medes and the Persians, because the laws of the Medes and the Persians can never be altered. So what he can do is, or the only thing they can do is, he can issue a counter decree, and that's what he did. So he armed the Jews better than the Persian soldiery so that they would get the upper hand in a conflict. And the result was the feast of Purim, which is celebrated till today and which is a very major feast in Israel, the second after Paso. So coming back to Yazdegard I, he's the second great emperor who marries the Jews. And he is also famous for two other amazing things. One, there is an emperor called Arcadius, Byzantine emperor. Now Arcadius trusts Yazdegard so much, despite the fact that they are traditional enemies, that he wants his son, Theodosius, trained by him. So he sends his son for training to this Persian emperor. Second, Yazdegard is called upon by the nascent Christian community in Persia to preside at an ecumenical council, the council being at a place called Seleucia, which is none other than Tezafan, which happened to be one of the ancient Iranian cities. And presiding at this council, he was to decide as to what exactly was the nature of Christ and whether the Nicene creed was to be followed. Now you'll remember, the Nicene creed belonged to the first ecumenical council of 325 AD where Constantine the Great presided and bishops came from all over. And there were various theories about Christ which were floating around. One was Christ was Logos, the equivalent of the word which has come down in the flesh. One was he's the son of God. One was that he's a prophet like the other great prophets. So Constantine had to choose and Constantine had to choose between two Greek words which are similar sounding. Homocius or Homocius which is of like substance or of the same substance as Almighty God. And the Nicene creed took the latter choice and said of the same substance, hence the divinity of Christ. And Yazdegard in 410 sat down among all the bishops and decided for them that they would be better off if they followed this Nicene creed. The post script of course was Nestorianism which we don't need to get into just now but which ultimately laid down that Christ has two natures, not one. And both are intermixed. One is divine, one is human. So you can see this emperor was a remarkable emperor in that he was a tutor to a Byzantine emperor's son and that he actually laid down for the Christians what they should worship. He's supposed to have come to his end in a very peculiar way and that end again is spoken of in Sildosi's Shavnamen where apparently some white horse comes out of a lake and the horse is wild and nobody can contain him. So the emperor tries to contain him and the horse kicks the emperor to death. So this is the way Yazdegard one is supposed to have. Disappear from the scene. Now he in turn is followed by one of the larger than life Sasanian emperors, a man called Bheram Ghor, Bheram the fifth. And Ghor means the hunter of the wild ass. So this was a man who went over to India who got gypsies from India who got an Indian queen back with him. He was very eclectic. He loved science, he loved agriculture. He promoted art and he was a great connoiser of food and wine as well. So he loved life because of the rest of India. And he was another man who apparently was fated in all these legends Baj sang about him, et cetera, long after he died. And after him came Yazdegard II. Now Yazdegard II is an emperor who is remembered for the forced conversions that I spoke about because he had a chief priest called Meir Narse and that chief priest believed in an offshoot of Zoroastianism which we know today as Zulwanitham. Now you have in our Zoroastias Gathars, God as the be all and end all of everything, the creator of everything. He creates in the beginning two spirits and gives them the power of choice. One becomes the good spirit, one becomes the bad spirit. This is now perverted into boundless time taking the place of God, Zulwan. And out of boundless time comes God and the devil, Ariman. And they are exact and opposite in every way except one. And that one is that God has omniscience whereas the devil doesn't. So you have this 12,000 year period within which ultimately God knows that with the help of man the devil will be destroyed. So this emperor followed this brand of Zoroastianism under the chief priest Meir Narse and then went into Armenia and had forced conversions made of Christians. The backlash of course was great as a result of which most of Armenia then chose Nestorian Christianity. Yazdegad III in turn had three sons who ruled. Now you remember Shapur I also had three sons who ruled. Of course with Behram I having son and grandson in between. Now here you had the first son to rule who was Hormaz III, nothing much happened in Israel. But you had a very long reign of an emperor called Piroch. And in Piroch's time there was a huge conflict with capitalites who were white huns, persons called white huns who came in from the north. And at one stage they got so powerful that they were able to capture and keep as hostage. This man's son, an emperor who became known as covered the first. So his reign of 25 years was spent largely in conserving Persian territory from the heftalites, that is the white huns. And after him comes the third brother, man called Valkash, who's there for a very short period. And then comes covered one. Now covered one has at his time another prophet who emerges. A man called Mazdak. Mazdak happens to be the first communist known to mankind. Because Mazdak preaches, everything must be shared in common, including women. And that time of course women were treated as property, though not frankly with the internationalism as much as they were treated in other faiths. So Mazdak at once at the first part of his rule was able somehow to convert the king to his thinking. But his preaching became so abhorrent to the media that they overthrew covered. So covered first part of his reign was from 488 to 496 AD. And he was thrown out by his own brother, Jamazdruul for about two years. And came back only on the promise that Mazdak's teachings would not gain acceptance. After which he was able to rule for a very long time. And he is best known in history. As the greatest Sasenian king's father, that is Khushru Anoshiravan, Khushru the First. Now Khushru the First came to the throne. He was a younger son and a very long reign of 38 years. And he came to the throne somewhat like Ashoka the Great in India by finishing off his brothers so that ultimately he would be able to take over. It is said in Khushru's defense that he was forced to do so. But anyway he comes to the throne with blood on his hands. But he turns out to be a philosopher king. Now Plato, if you remember, it's spoken of the best possible rule being that of a philosopher king in Rome that had taken place between 98 to 180 AD. And you had these great emperors one after the other. You started with Nerva who was a senator. Nerva appointed Trajan, Trajan appointed Hadrian. Hadrian appointed Antoninus Pius. And Antoninus Pius in turn appointed Marcus Aurelius who all of you have heard of. This 98 to 180 period, which is called the Pax Romana in history, the peace of Rome, was considered by Will Durant a Great Historian to be the greatest ever period of governance in history, including modern history. It finished only because Marcus Aurelius' son, Commodus, took over from Marcus Aurelius. Now each one of these emperors, it so happens, did not have a son to succeed him. And therefore the best man in the realm was chosen. But the moment a particular son came in, out went the philosopher king. Coming back to our philosopher king, Khushru the first. Khushru the first proved that you could be a son and a philosopher king. After all, he was the son of King Kavad. And Ashoka's rock edicts, the 12th rock edict in particular, speaks of fraternity and says that if you praise somebody else's faith, you are not only raising your own faith and doing it a favor, but you are also uplifting the other man's faith. Likewise, if you denigrate somebody's faith, you are actually denigrating your own, but you are not denigrating his. And the general idea would be that if one were able to take from another's faith and also try and follow it, you would be much more complete for it. You would be much more complete for it. This is Ashoka. Khushru, in much the same way, had a famous proclamation which was that I have never rejected anything good from anything, from any other faith. I accept completely whatever is good from every faith, including my own. And I only reject that which does not accord with reason in all faiths, including my own. So he was, in fact, a philosopher king. He attracted philosophers, artists, et cetera, from all over the world, at that, the known world at that time. And he was therefore referred to as Anoshe Raman, which means immortal soul, or the greatest, a person who is way, way beyond every other ruler. He had some very beautiful sayings. One saying was that there's nothing better than to reward a generous man, me as a king, so that we beget more generous men. That's my gloss, of course. Another delightful saying is that whenever some harm befalls you, it seems to linger on and on in your mind. But all the good that has befallen you vanishes in a trace. How true. And one day, his chief priest sit with Indian philosophers, Greek philosophers, Roman philosophers, and the king asked this question. What is the worst possible thing that you can conceive of to befall men? And the Greek philosophers sat together and said, old age coupled with poverty. Indian philosophers came out with an even better answer. A diseased mind and body. Buzurg Meher, who was his chief priest, said, I disagree with these gentlemen. I would say that it is to be approaching your death without having practiced virtue. Beautiful. So in this man's reign, you had these lofty ideas floating around. You had persons from all over coming over. And you had complete freedom of thought, expression, religion, et cetera. Also, as a warrior king, he happened to be a very great one because he got back Armenia. He got Antioch. He went as far as Antioch in the West and he had the cities of Edesa and Dura paying tribute to him. So the empire was also at its maximum extent up to that point. One other interesting story about him, when an ambassador from another country came, and was shown his palace, he remarked, how is there this little odd triangular piece of land with a hut on it, right in front of the palace? It marks the view of the palace. So the king said, ah, that was an old widow that I knew for a long time. And I don't have the heart to displace her. It shows you what kind of man he was. Now, after his golden age, if I may call it that, you then had his son coming and his son, Hormaz Fawr, unfortunately had a couple of brothers-in-law who ganged up against him and his own general, a man called Bairam Chobin. And they finally deposed him and blinded him. Now, having done that, his son, who was the next Khushru, Khushru Parvez, Parvez means victorious, happened to be on the run. Hormaz Fawr dies in 590. So technically Khushru Parvez's reign begins in 590 AD. And he's on the run fighting Bairam Chobin. Now, something again, something very remarkable again takes place. And this time, it's vice versa. He goes to Emperor Morris, Byzantine Emperor. And the Byzantine Emperor formally adopts him, helps him, gives him a Byzantine army with which to defeat his father's general. So, not only is he adopted by the Emperor, he also marries the Emperor's daughter. And the Emperor's daughter produces a boy who ultimately destroys the entire family because he puts to death everybody around him. So that finally when the Sasenian Empire has to be ruled by a king, there's nobody left to rule it. And a young 80-year-old grandson is pulled out of nowhere, who becomes Yazdegad III, who's the last Emperor. So anyway, Khushru Parvez is called Parvez, meaning victorious. Because he had a general called Sharbaras. And that general again was victorious right up to the Mediterranean sea on this side, to the Indus here, Caspian up and the Red Sea below. He's also supposed to have carried away part of Jesus' cross, which Emperor Constantine's mother had taken away and was housed in Jerusalem. So he carries away the cross as great booty. And a backlash then takes place. Heraclius, another general, becomes the Byzantine Emperor. And then ultimately manages to get back some of the territories. And by 628 AD, Khushru Parvez is old, tired and is murdered by Emperor Boris' grandson. That is his own son, a man called Shiroy, who becomes Kavad II. This Emperor is so cruel that he disappears in four years. And as I told you in 632, the last little boy who's found is put on the throne. After some nine rulers have come and gone, including two of Khushru Parvez's daughters. And it is this last Emperor now who has to face a huge Arab onslaught. So the Arabs come in under Khalif Umar, with the great commander Khalid Ibn Walid. And there are two battles at which finally Sasenian Persia disappears. You have Qadisia in 636 and you have Nahawan in 642. And you have this poor boy on the run till 651, where he hides in some mill and is murdered for his jewelry. So this brings us to the end of today's voyage. And though most people speculate that the reason for the fall of the Sasenian dynasty was Shiroy's murdering everybody around him. So that ultimately there was no leader to stand up to the Arabs. I would add one more very important factor. And that very important factor is that by then they had completely lost sight of the great Khushru, Khushru I's ideas of fraternity. Because had Khushru I's ideas permeated, there have been many more from all the other religions to stand by the Persians in their hour of need, which unfortunately was not the case. Thank you all very much. Nariman, thank you for a fascinating and incredibly wide-ranging lecture. I think it must be your legal training that allows you to talk to us for an hour without a scrap of paper. And we've had a wonderful account of the Sasanian dynasty with reference to so much information from Tudor England to Rome to Tessifon and Mazdakism, Manichaeism first of course, Zurbannism. And so a fascinating talk. Now we have got just under 10 minutes for questions. And would you like to come to the microphone? If we're going to have the questions heard, I have to use the roving mic. So nice of you. And I'm very much delighted that as a lawyer, you have so much depth of knowledge about the religion, and especially the history. At the very initial stage of your lecture, you have referred to Mitra because Mitra is also referred to in the Vedas. And especially it is also believed that the Mithannis, who are also called Hurians, and they used to also worship Mitra and they migrated as an Aryans to India. So it was the same Mitra or some other Mitra because in the Egyptian library, there are certain artifacts which have been found where it is written, some of the expressions which are being used in the Vedas in the name of the Varna and the name of the Mitra. This treaty has been concluded between the Babylonians and the Egyptians, kings of the Assyrians or something like that. So it appears like this because the Aryans have come from the Syrian regions and they had a lot of fight there and therefore they migrated here to India. So it is the same Mitra which you are referring to. It is the same Mitra because we all come from the same source. You must know that Avesta is an exact sister of Rigvedic Satsgrith. See, apparently the Aryans came down from the steps. One theory is that they all came down from the steps. One lot came into Punjab, one went into the Iranian plateau and one went towards the German side, which is why and languages won't lie. The Indo-European group of languages was discovered by Sir William Jones who started life as a judge in Calcutta and started the Asiatic society. And he found that this cluster of languages which he called the Indo-European group of languages all must have had a common mother which scholars now reconstruct as proto-Indo-European. So yes, it is exactly the same Mitra. Thank you Sir for that enlightening talk. You mentioned Bozorg Neher and the quotation that if we reached that without practicing virtue, that is the worst. Could you please tell us about this link between succeeding in good governance and having good advisors or priests who know how to guide and kings who know how to listen. Thank you Sir. Very difficult question because you are in Utopia now. That would be my answer.