India-Iran Conference

he Indic and Iranian worlds have been in unbroken contact for at least four millennia. The second millennium BCE witnessed the Indo-European speaking peoples’ migrations eastward, forming the initial cultural and linguistic links that would continue into the Common Era. These connections were sustained through Kushana and Sasanian imperial expansions (sequentially, first-seventh centuries CE), while the establishment of Islam in Iran in the seventh century CE was an impetus behind Zoroastrian migrations to western India well into the medieval period.

India and Iran continued in intimate contact through the diplomatic and military engagements between the great early modern empires of the Safavids (1501-1732) and the Mughals (1525-1857), a contact that has reached well into the twentieth century with the Parsis (Zoroastrians) as an integral community of present-day India. The regions encompassed by the modern nation-states of Afghanistan and Pakistan have been the bridges facilitating these long-standing connections, constituting the liminal spaces where the boundaries between the Indic and Iranian cultural spheres are far from clear. The interdisciplinary group coming together for this conference is uniquely qualified to bring not only various specialties but also various time periods into conversation, ultimately resulting in a comprehensive examination of Indo-Iranian cultural productions.