Source :
www.mumbaimirror.com By : Manoj R Nair
![[Post Image]](http://cms.mumbaimirror.com/portalfiles/1/15/200702/Image/080207/fp2.jpg)
It could be an event quite unprecedented in the 3000-year-old history of the Zoroastrian religion. A group of reformists in the community, called the Association for Revival of Zoroastrianism (ARZ), are planning to set up an agiary or fire temple that will be open to spouses of community members married outside the fold.
The move is likely to create a storm in the community which bars entry at fire temples to non-Parsis, including non-Parsi women married to Parsis and children of Parsi women married outside the community.
In August 2005, the group had converted a Colaba apartment into a prayer hall more liberal in allowing people to attend religious ceremonies. The hall also offered navjote or initiation ceremonies for children of Parsi women married outside the community.
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Source :
www.science-spirit.org By : Meera Subramanian
![[Post Image]](http://www.science-spirit.org/images/vulture.gif)
For millennia Zoroastrians have used vultures to dispose of their dead. What will happen when the birds disappear?
When Nargis Baria died at the age of eighty-five in Mumbai, India, her only child, a daughter named Dhun, initiated the death rituals of their Zoroastrian faith. Her mother’s body was dressed in white, prayers whispered in her ear, and after three days a summoned dog’s dismissal indicated that the spirit had moved on. It was time for the nassesalars, or pallbearers, to carry the body to the Towers of Silence, circular structures of stone located on fifty-seven, park-like acres in the heart of Mumbai, surrounded by the upscale high rises of Malabar Hill. They removed her clothing and placed her body in the middle of three concentric circles, one each for women, men and children. At the center was a well where the bones, the last of the last remains of a human body, would be swept in a few days time.
All the proper components of dokhmenashini, the Zoroastrian method of handling their dead, were in place, but the vultures that once completed the cycle by scavenging an exposed corpse in less than five minutes were missing. The custom, so ancient it was described by Herodotus 2,500 years ago, has come to an abrupt end in the past decade, as the vulture population of South Asia Read More »
A 4500-year-old cypress tree in Iran’s southeastern province of Yazd is to be soon protected as one of the world’s biggest living organisms.
Department of Environment of Yazd Province hopes to have this colossal tree protected from being damaged or destroyed.
The tree, gracefully standing in the city of Abarku, located in the southwest of the Yazd Province is one of the region’s seven historical and natural sites and is nominated to be added to the World Heritage list.
Russian scientist Alexander Rouf has estimated the tree’s age to be between 4000 and 4500 years, and with a height of 25 meters Read More »
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