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Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism was once the dominant religion of much of Greater Iran, and was a formative influence on that region's history and traditions. The religion was marginalized following the Islamic conquests of the mid-7th century, after which the number of adherents dwindled significantly, and there are less than 20,000 Zoroastrians left in that region today. Today, the largest indigenous population of Zoroastrians is in India, where they number about 70,000. Eight of the nine principal religious centers are located on the west coast of that country (the ninth is in central Iran). The term Zoroastrianism was first attested by the Oxford English Dictionary in 1874 in Archibald Sayce's Principles of Comparative Philology. The first surviving reference to Zoroaster in Western scholarship is attributed to Thomas Browne (1605–1682), who briefly refers to the prophet in his 1643 Religio Medici. The OED records 1743 (Warburton, Pope's Essay) as the earliest reference to Zoroaster. The term Mazdaism (pronounced /'mæzd??z?m/) is a typical 19th century construct, taking Mazda- from the name Ahura Mazda and adding the suffix -ism to suggest a belief system. The March 2001 draft edition of the OED also records an alternate form, Mazdeism, perhaps derived from the French Mazdéisme, which first appeared in 1871. The Zoroastrian name of the religion is Mazdayasna, which combines Mazda- with the Avestan language word yasna, meaning "worship, devotion".
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