c. 1996 Religion News Service
BOMBAY, India (RNS)-Soaring above luxury apartments in an exclusive section of Bombay, vultures swoop toward the Parsi Towers of Silence on Malabar Hill. It is time for another”burial”at the”vultures cemetery.” Parsis, Indian followers of the ancient faith of Zoroastrianism, believe fire, earth and water are sacred. Thus they will not cremate or bury their dead. Instead, the deceased are left on circular stone towers to be picked clean by vultures.
Eight towers dot the hill. The entrance is along a private road guarded by watchmen who make sure that non-Parsis do not enter. Inside, an ancient stone path winds to an inner sanctum, where the first tower was built in 1673.
A guard is posted at an inner gate and a sign reads:”PARSIS ONLY ALLOWED.”Another notice warns:”TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.” The burial practice is part of the cultural and religious heritage of Zoroastrianism, which is widely regarded as the world’s oldest form of monotheism. Many of Bombay’s Parsis live in closed colonies cut off from the rest of Indian society.
Yet the Parsi community also is struggling against the tides of modernism, which threaten to erode what time and tradition have built. Intermarriage, declining birth rates and a dwindling priesthood make the future uncertain.”There are not enough babies, which is leading to the death of the community,”says Ava Khullar, a Parsi social scientist in Delhi.”There is also an unusually high number of Parsi bachelors and spinsters. The rapid decline in Parsis is a socio-economic phenomenon linked to the fact that the community is progressive, Westernized and has a modern outlook.” Such late 20th century pressures are far removed from Zoroastrianism’s early roots.
The religion stems from the Persian prophet Zoroaster, who lived in 1200 to 1500 B.C. In contrast to the polytheism of his era, he proclaimed the existence of one God, Ahura Mazda (“Wise Lord”) and a theology based on a battle between good and evil.
The Zoroastrian emperor Darius the Great (521-486 B.C.) had a kingdom that spread from the Red Sea to Central Europe and into Central Asia, Ethiopia and across North Africa. Pockets of Zoroastrians can still be found in the former southern Soviet republics. But with the collapse of the Persian empire, most followers of Zoroastrianism fled to the west Indian state of Gujarat north of Bombay seeking freedom from persecution by Muslims.
The name”Parsi”refers to their Persian roots.
Through the centuries, the Parsis’ numbers have remained small. Today an estimated 71,000 live in India, of which more than 50,000 are in Bombay, though some observers say the numbers are lower. Worldwide, there are an estimated 100,000 Zoroastrians. A small Zoroastrian community lives in Southern California.
As Parsis seek to hold onto their heritage while also bending to modern pressures, debate rages within the community on a number of fronts.
One is whether to continue using the Towers of Silence. The problem in part is practical. In some rural areas of western India, where Parsi farmers live, there no longer are vultures, making the Towers superfluous.
More vexing, perhaps, is the issue of the Parsis’ declining numbers.
Many fear that because of the group’s low fertility rate, the religion is in danger of becoming extinct. In 1961, there were 105,974 Parsis on the Indian sub-continent, but in the last three decades the number has fallen by as much as 30,000.
The waning Parsi priesthood reflects the problem. Last century, there were thousands of full-time clergy in Bombay. Now the number has fallen to less than 200, and there are few full-time priests elsewhere, said Dr. Ramiyar Karanjia, principal of one of two Parsi seminaries in Bombay. The seminaries, the only ones of their kind in the world, attract students from as far away as Iran.”On my father’s side my family has served as priests for five generations in temples in Gujarat,”said Kranjia,”while on my mother’s side priests date back, as far as we know, from the beginning at (the village of) Udvada,”a mecca for Parsis where a sacred flame has burned for 1,200 years.
Like other priests, Karanjia believes the community has a duty to conform to its ancient codes, which include a prohibition on interfaith marriages. This orthodox position is still held by many Parsis in Bombay, but there has been a big change in attitudes.
Fifty years ago, it was almost taboo for a man to marry a non-Parsi, but now such unions have become more acceptable as the number of interfaith marriages has grown.”Our birth rate is zero,”said Jehan Daruwalla, editor of Bombay Samachar, a Parsi daily founded in 1822 that has spearheaded the campaign for reform.”In the next 20 years we will cease to be a community and in 50 years could be a museum piece. We suggest that intermarried Parsis’ children should be accepted into the fold. Without such acceptance our community will disappear.” On the other hand, said Khorshed S. Daboo, director of the conservative Parsi Bombay paper Jam-E-Jamshed,”We’re a small community and feel that if we become more liberal our identities will be lost.”
END MURPHY
