Zoroaster then began to spread his teachings and develop them over subsequent visions, each time asking further questions of Ahura Mazda. There is debate amongst scholars about when Zoroaster preached his teachings. The consensus is that he dates between and BC.
However, some scholars believe that Zoroaster was a contemporary of Cyrus the Great ; the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Despite his status as a prophet, Zoroaster himself was not worshipped. This supreme being was believed to be the creator of the universe.
He was omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. As in ancient Persian religion, Ahura Mazda was opposed by Angra Mainyu, who was the essence of evil.
Zoroastrians believed that Ahura Mazda granted humanity free will. With this ability, they could choose to either follow the good, pure teachings of Ahura Mazda or the path of falsehood and evil under Angra Mainyu. Other ancient Persian deities that had surrounded Ahura Mazda were still acknowledged. These were spirits, and many were based on older Persian gods such as Mithra , who later became the focus of Graeco-Roman cults. Like many ancient religions, Zoroastrianism was primarily an oral tradition.
Hymns and prayers were taught to the priesthood and passed down through the generations. The main holy text of Zoroastrianism is the Avesta. This is a collection of hymns, called Yasna-Gathas, along with prayers recited either by the priests or by common worshippers. These 17 songs came from Zoroaster himself.
Each individual Yasna is a hymn, while the Gathas are the wider groups each Yasna belongs to. Alongside these hymns, the Avesta was split into several sections that evolved over time. A collection of 23 prayers called the Visperad accompanies the Yasnas.
The Yashts were 21 hymns devoted to the sacred elements of fire and water. Yashts were also dedicated to specific manifestations of Ahura Mazda that the worshipper sought to invoke for aid, such as Mithra. These spirits were often based on older Persian gods. The Vendidad acted as the moral code of the Persian religion, determining rituals and acting as instructions for how one should live. This covered topics such as funerary rites, appropriate social behavior, and even personal hygiene.
This rich oral culture took the form of traditional texts after later generations wrote it down. The dichotomy of good and evil was a strong narrative. Individuals had free will to choose their path.
As creations of Ahura Mazda, humans were seen as holding some essence of the divine. By following the path of truth and righteousness, humans could become closer to Ahura Mazda. To do so, people were encouraged to be honest and truthful, charitable, compassionate, and to be moderate in their behavior and diet.
Purity was also a strong concept in Zoroastrian belief. The elements created by Ahura Mazda, like water and fire, were seen as pure and should never be tainted. Born to Parsi parents from Gujarat who resettled in Zanzibar for business, Bulsara went to school near Mumbai, moved to Britain in and soon took the name Freddie Mercury. I started to ponder the idea of having a late-in-life navjote, egged on by many of the friendly co-participants in the tour, who thought it would be a fun excuse to all meet up again.
I floated the idea with Sherry, but as we got chatting on the bus, I quickly realised I had been mistaken to infer from his bleached hair and carefree demeanour that he was a reformer and would approve of the idea. In Zoroastrianism, there is no need to be ascetic or severe in order to be conservative. Sherry told me that if either parent was not a Parsi, he would not perform a navjote. He did not accept the century-old ruling allowing navjotes for those children who have just a Parsi father.
I pointed out to him that there were many people on our tour who might end up marrying non-Parsis. Was it really necessary to kick them and their offspring out of the religion? Sherry combined a fervent commitment to religious dogma and ritual with a remarkably warm, laid-back attitude to just about every other aspect of life.
It was a curious combination, but one I came to recognise in many Parsis we met. W e arrived late one evening in Udvada, the small Gujarat town that houses the holiest fire in all Zoroastrianism, the Iranshah. Laying eyes on the Iranshah was set to be the highlight of the tour for most of the group. If legend is to be believed, the fire was consecrated shortly after the arrival of the Parsis in India, and has been burning constantly for more than a millennium.
The current temple that houses it dates from the s, and before priests are allowed to conduct prayer ceremonies there, they must undergo a nine-day purification ritual, during which they can have no human contact. The narrow lanes that make up the centre of old Udvada are lined with once-spectacular Parsi mansions now mostly fallen into disrepair. Just a handful of Parsi families still live in the town, though there are a number of inns for the pilgrims who come regularly from Mumbai and across the world.
We checked into one of them, which had simple rooms that were bare save for a bed, a ceiling fan and a small representation of Zarathustra on the wall. He lived across from the temple, in a villa with windows open to the street, through which he was visible sitting at a desk, dressed in white.
Dastoor beckoned me into his home with a flick of the wrist. Now 57, he had undergone priestly training at the same time as studying business and economics in Mumbai. On the wall were portraits of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, and he could trace his lineage back 21 generations, all of them high priests of the Iranshah fire.
He took up the role in , when his father died. Dastoor told me that nowhere in the Zoroastrian texts does it say children from mixed families should not be allowed to be Zoroastrians.
I asked him whether, if I did decide to have a navjote from a liberal priest, I would be allowed into his temple to see the Iranshah fire. He shook his head, with perhaps a hint of regret. Still, he was adamant that the community would need to make serious changes if it was going to survive. But what, exactly? He sighed. But we have to think of something. Though, to be honest, I doubt we can make a difference.
T here was something inspiring about the people we had met who were upholding a tradition that went back more than three millennia. Still, it was hardly devastating for someone who had not previously felt a strong connection to the community.
I was more interested how some of the others on the trip felt, especially the women. They had grown up practising the religion, had been interested enough to come on this trip, and were being told they would be kicked out if they married out.
Many said they would prefer to marry a Parsi, but most accepted this was unlikely, given how few they met in their normal lives. Our tour had not, as far as my sleuthing could detect, resulted in the formation of any new Zoroastrian couples.
In the diaspora communities of North America, fire temples are open to everyone, and there is no controversy over navjotes for children of mixed parentage, she told me. The small community of Iranian Zoroastrians is even more liberal, allowing female priests, and there are also nascent neo-Zoroastrian movements in parts of the Middle East.
As the tour approached its end, we visited Navsari, the city from which the Tata family originated, and where both of my Parsi great-grandmothers were born and raised.
We stopped at a library that housed ancient Persian and Gujarati Zoroastrian texts, the grand reading room adorned with portraits of illustrious Parsis of yore. We also stopped at the Vadi Daremeher, a seminary that has trained Parsi priests for nearly nine centuries, but no longer has any students.
He wanted to be cremated when he died, he told me, and was adamant that new voices would win out over traditionalists in the end. As we spoke, his phone flickered into life with an urgent message. An elderly priest in Mumbai had accidentally set himself on fire while praying in his fire temple, and died.
The news made me think about two elderly priests I had met a couple of days earlier, when we hopped off the bus at Nargol, a coastal town where the formerly sizeable Parsi population has dwindled to just a few families. Darabshaw Govadia was 86 and could barely walk; he was helped by his brother Rusi, a former bus driver who, at 80, was marginally sprightlier. Both priests were living inside the local temple, a handsome yellow structure with a sloping roof and fringed with lush greenery.
They tended the fire throughout the day and night, always wearing their billowing white robes and receiving their meals from the town in tiffin boxes. They told me they had just a few visitors each day. I asked who would replace them when they were no longer physically able to perform their duties.
We concluded our stilted chat as the rest of the group emerged from saying their prayers, and we all assembled around the brothers on the steps of the temple for a group photograph. Then, it was time for us to leave. The two brothers smiled faintly in farewell, and shuffled back into the temple, to resume the prayers at their sacred flame.
This article was amended on 10 August The photo of the Parsi priests outside a temple in Gujarat had been flipped when supplied by the photo agency. This has now been corrected. A Parsi fire temple in Mumbai, India. A funeral, a family, and a journey into a disappearing religion. The last of the Zoroastrians — podcast. Read more. Some Zoroastrians also recognize the evergreen cypress tree as a symbol of eternal life.
Zoroastrian places of worship are sometimes called fire temples. Each fire temple contains an altar with an eternal flame that burns continuously and is never extinguished. According to legend, three ancient Zoroastrian fire temples, known as the great fires, were said to have come directly from the Zoroastrian god, Ahura Mazda, at the beginning of time. Archaeologists have searched for these places, though it's unclear whether the great fires ever existed or were purely mythical.
There corpses were exposed to the elements—and local vultures—until the bones were picked clean and bleached. Then they were collected and placed in lime pits called ossuaries. Dakhmas have been illegal in Iran since the s. Many Zoroastrians today bury their dead beneath concrete slabs, though some Parsi in India still practice sky burials. A dakhma remains in operation near Mumbai, India, for example.
Many Europeans became familiar with Zoroastrian founder Zarathustra through the nineteenth century novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In it, Nietzsche follows the prophet Zarathustra on his travels. British musician Freddie Mercury , lead singer for the rock band Queen, was of Parsi descent.
Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, practiced Zoroastrianism. American novelist George R. Zoroaster; BBC. The Last of the Zoroastrians. Zoroastrianism: Zorostudies. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Today, with about million followers, Hinduism is the third-largest religion behind Christianity and Islam.
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