Full details of awards canbe found on the

Academy's web site atwww.britac.ac. uk

rapidly-disappearing language. Linguistic datacollected during the summer are now beinganalysed. The researchers are working with a smallset of informants, all native speakers of Inari Sami,to document the grammatical structure and soundsystem of the language, with the wider aim ofwriting a reference grammar over the next twoyears. Documentation and analysis of lnari Sami isan urgent priority, as it may aid local efforts towardlanguage preservation and education in the Samicommunity.'

Approximately half of the awards made in the firstcompetition were for work continuing over a spanor two or three years, and fuller accounts ofcompleted projects will appear in the pages of theReview in due course.

Towards the other end of the scale, the SmallResearch Grants scheme offers small amountsof money, typically to cover brief trips abroad.

Dr K.F. McEvoy received an award last sum~mer, and describes his research on 'CommunityRestorative Justice' on page 58.

Besides monitoring the progress of its first batch ofLarger Research Grants, the Academy has duringthe period of this Review received reports on someproportion of the hundreds of small research andconference grants made each year. In December2001 the Grants Committee awarded another 83Small Research Grants, 34 British ConferenceGrants, 50 individual Overseas Conference Grantsand three Block Overseas Conference Grants. Italso confirmed a Worldwide Congress Grant of£12,000 for the 16th Congress oj the InternationalAssociation Jor the Histor)' oj Class, which is to beheld in the UK in 2003. The last time the UKhosted the Congress was in 1979. The event isconvened triennially, and brings togetherarchaeologists, economIc historians, museumcurators, art historians, dealers, scientists and otherresearchers from all over the world.

Professor J.R. Hinnells oj the University of Derby has bem visiting and researchillg Bomba)' Parsis sillcc 1971,and has laid the JOllndation oj persollal colltacts, 1I0tabl)' with the high pricst Dastllr (Very Rcvd) Dr K. M.

JalllaspAsa. His CIIrrelltprojcct is to writc a history oj the COllllllllllity alld thc rcligioll oj Bombay Parsis. Parsis arcIIlelltiolled in passillg ill most histories oj Illdia collccmed with politics, social reforlll, alld ecollOlnic history. Thc)' werepiolleers in cdllcation, thc illdllstrial rcvoilltion in India, the JOlllldillg and earl)' devcloplllcllt oj thc Illdiall NatiollalCOllgress and its liberal breakaway, the Wcstcrn India Liberal Fo/mdation and the Indcpclldence InOVClllent.Bllt theyare rarel)' studicd, and little has bccn written on thc religion and CIIlt/1ralvailles that were at the JOllndation oj milchof their achievclI/cl/t. The projcct is conccived as a collaborativc cxercise - as well as bcillg a pcrsollal Jricnd, Dr

JalllaspAsa has all inside kllowledgc oj alld IIl1iqlle acccss to COllllllllllity records that 110historiall has prcviollsl)' IIsed.

The basic method of working is to identifY the keyissues, then we each work on our respectivesources, Dr JamaspAsa on the Parsi Gujarati(which is quite different from 'ordinary' Gujarati)sources and myself on the English ones (there aremany both in India and the British Library). Iwrite the text of the chapters, Dr JamaspAsa readsand comments. With the chapters on religion, Iresearch and write on the doctrinal material(because of the problems of perceived partisanshipwithin the Parsi community). For the liturgicalmaterial, he - as high priest - takes me through theinner (temple) rituals in word or rehearsal. Becauseof the purity laws, non-Parsis cannot enter thetemples. We go to public rituals (weddings,initiations) together. He also gives me access to

his family records (his is one of the three oldestpriestly lineages in the community) for thehistorical dimension. I question him from acomparative religion perspective and we producean agreed manuscript written by me.

He and I have worked together on prevIouspublications, and we know the wealth of unusedmaterial that exists, and want to write a historythat has never been attempted in this way. Anotherunique dimension of this work is the materialfrom the Parsi diaspora Ifrom a book currentlybeing completed by Professor H innells]. Othershave seen the diaspora as peripheral to BombayParsi history, but in fact it was crucial, supplyingthe wealth and much of the expertise that wentinto the development of the community - forexample from the China and East Africa trade.

Professor Hillnells has colllpleted the first phase if hisresearch, alld all extract fro III his illterilll report is givenbeloll'.

My autumn research focused on checkingbibliographies, indexes, and so on at the BritishLibrary and SOAS, to ensure I had a comprehensivelist, especially of primary sources. In India, I checkedmaterials in the three main Bombay libraries. I alsospent a week in Gujarat checking sources and foundrecords for approximately 200 years in three keyParsi areas. All these records are in old Parsi Gujarati,which few can understand (even in the local Parsiconul1Lll1ity). My high priestly collaborator, DrJamaspAsa, can, but because I have found so muchmaterial, he cannot spend sufficient time in Gujarat.We will, therefore, arrange for files to be sent to himin Mumbai, or raise funds in the conmmnity for aresearch assistant working under his guidance andsupervision. These materials undoubtedly make theoriginal contribution of this book yet greater.Unfortunately bouncing around in a jeep for a weekvisiting centres where there are no roads (or evenworse, roads not properly maintained) triggered amedical crisis and I was hospitalised on my return toCambridge. However, the Oriental Institute sent apackage of books each day to me and the result wasthat r read more than I would have done withoutthe medical problems (losing out on the more socialdimensions of the visit). r looked only at sourcesfrom Indian small-scale or private publishers, whichare not available in Britain. These were mostly oneighteenth century Bombay history (including onesuperb source, which amounts to a local early historyof the Bombay Fort based on records not used byothers, and to which I have never before seenreference). r also read through the entire proceedingsof three important nineteenth century law casesinvolving Parsis and which were of religioussignificance; 111 London libraries, only briefnewspaper accounts/sunm1aries are available.

Another change became necessary. I had plannedto complete the work which Dr JamaspAsa and rhad started in England, going through the detailsof, and theology behind, virtually all religiousrituals. Dr JamaspAsa had been one of three highpriests, and the least outspoken of them. Now hehas become the most prominent due to the ageand personal circumstances of the other two. He istherefore much busier than expected, especially asone of the fiercest religious disputes I have known(over funerals - all the vultures have died due to avirus) has broken out.

There was, however, some remarkable benefitarising from some sad circumstances. He invited me

to stay with him and his family in Mumbai. To ourknowledge this is the first time an outside academichas stayed with a high priest (made so unusualbecause of the purity laws). Two weeks prior to myvisit his mother-in-law died and so the family wasengaged in the second stage of strict traditionalmourning rites. While I was there, his father-in-lawalso died, so [ was in their home while the first twoweeks mourning rites were undertaken. I offered tomove into a hotel out of sympathy with their grief,but even more so because of the purity laws. Bothhe and his wife insisted [ stayed, being, they said,'part of the fan'lily'. I could share their grief becauseI knew both parents. Further, I was staying withthem over New Year, and was present whendomestic rites associated with new ventures wereperformed, which are not mentioned in theavailable books. (When talking about rituals to theconuTIunity's main RE teacher at the end of mystay, I found not even he had known of thistraditional high priestly practice.) From a strictlyanthropological perspective, it was a umqueexperience. The rest of the work on the rituals willbe done either on my next visit, or during a possiblevisit by him to Britain.

We now plan to include another range of originalsources. The new material is the collection of theoral traditions relating to temples and associatedmiracles. Previously we had intended to focus onthe conventional history - the buildings, theirfoundation, development, and analysing the use of'sacred space' ete. But talking to practising Parsis,and visiting old temples in the remote villages, itbecame apparent that what made the buildingsimportant for the daily lives of practitioners wasnot their antiquity, but the firm belief inmiraculous events associated with them. In onesense this relates the sort of oral histories collectedby Kreyenbroek and Munshi (Living Zoro-astrianism, Curzon, 2001, work also supported bythe British Academy) concerning individuals, toother such materials concerning the major centresof the religion. I have also unearthed a range of oldGujarati poetry and traditional cradlesongs whichfurnish fascinating materials relating to popularbelief and practice, a great contrast with theinstitutional records I unearthed.

In a recent IIpdate, Professor Hinnells reports that he hastraced an archive in Torollto of nineteenth celltllryhalldwrittCll letters ('loads of thelll') frolll DadabhoiNaoroji, a Parsi who becal/le the first Asiall MP atltV'estminster (MP for Fillsblfry, 1892-5) and led tileIndian National Congress IllOvelllent for two decades.Why the letters have ended lip in Toronto is IIl1knowlI.