Parsis affirm their identity as the descendants of Zoroastrians who migrated from Iran to India in the early medieval centuries, after the Islamic conquest of Persia, to preserve their faith in freedom. Tradition recounts their landing in Gujarat and their settlement under local protection, where they maintained their religion, sacred fires, and customs and in time became a distinctive community.
The name Parsi itself means "Persian," marking their origin, and their history in India is remembered as the safeguarding of an ancient faith through migration and endurance. The traditional account of the migration is preserved in the Qissa-i Sanjan ("Story of Sanjan"), a Persian-language poem composed in Gujarat around 1600, centuries after the events it describes, which tells that the migrants asked a local ruler, traditionally named Jadi Rana, for refuge; he is said to have sent a bowl filled to the brim with milk, signalling his land had no room for more people, to which the Zoroastrians responded by stirring sugar into the milk without spilling a drop, symbolising that they would sweeten society without displacing anyone. Historians treat the Qissa as a foundational communal narrative composed long after the fact, and the actual date of the migration, traditionally placed between the eighth and tenth centuries CE, is not established with precision from independent evidence.