Zoroastrian communities enabled European Orientalists to access ancient Iranian languages

Evidence

Zoroastrianism is still the faith of small, dwindling, but not unimportant minorities, in India, in Pakistan, and to some extent in Iran. They preserved the ancient writings, in the ancient script, and a knowledge of the ancient language, and it was these which enabled the first European Orientalists to learn Middle Iranian and to use it to rediscover the still more ancient languages of Iran. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 302

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Arabic served as the primary gateway language to the Orient for early European Orientalists. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 335; Orientalism uniquely holds philological access to the non-Western Other; Philology founded Orientalism as a science driven by European imperial acquisition — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 272 (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Arabic served as the primary gateway language to the Orient for early European Orientalists. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 335; Orientalism uniquely holds philological access to the non-Western Other; Philology founded Orientalism as a science driven by European imperial acquisition — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 272 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Philology founded Orientalism as a science driven by European imperial acquisition #complicates (0.78) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 272