ABSTRACT
Jenkins comments on how few historians, compared with philosophers or literary theorists, have intellectually engaged with theories of modernism and postmodernism. Similarly, while a number of religious studies writers have been involved in such methodological debates, writers on Zoroastrianism have rarely done so. Restrictions of space mean that this chapter cannot provide an exhaustive treatment of the history of Zoroastrian studies. The following is a broad brush stroke picture highlighting a few of the Western scholars whose work has been used most often, not simply within Zoroastrian studies but also in the wider field of religious studies. The constrictions of space mean that even a moderately full bibliography is impossible. An exception might be the French traveller, Anquetil du Perron, who, in 1771, published a two volumed account of Zoroastrianism based substantially on a two-year stay with Parsis in Gujarat.
