Although purporting to be of ancient origin, it is now generally regarded as a literary forgery,[1] most probably authored in the 16th or 17th century by Azar Kayvan, the leader of the Zoroastrian Illuminationist sect.
[2] Its Neoplatonic ideas have been strongly influenced by the 12th-century philosopher Suhravardi,[3][4] and have only a tenuous connection to mainstream Zoroastrianism.
[2] The text, though likely composed in India,[2] was first discovered in the Iranian city of Isfahan at the end of the 18th century by the Parsi Mulla Kaus of Bombay.
[11] An edited version of this was republished by Dhunjeebhoy J. Medhora in 1888, while at the same time a separate translation by Mirza Mohomed Hadi was serialised in the American Platonist magazine.
[7] The text, with its monotheistic tendency that was more akin to the religious sentiments of the West, was then used by some Bombay Parsis to mount a defence of their religion against the incipient criticism from Christian missionaries like John Wilson.