Imagine a Zoroastrian who always speaks the truth; and does good only for the sake of good, without any expectation of reward — spiritual or temporal. However, this righteous Zoroastrian, though regarding Ahura Mazda as the one God, never wears the sudreh and kusti, has never stepped inside a fire temple, never intones prayers and has never participated in any ceremony or ritual. Upon his transition, will he effortlessly soar through a celestial heaven or will he get hopelessly stuck on the Chinvat bridge, as Khshnoomists would have us believe?
While rituals are an integral part of most ancient faiths and pagan systems, Zoroastrianism perhaps takes the cake. How many stones does a naked priestly candidate have to jump upon while placing one hand on his head so as not to be bare headed, with the other hand covering his private parts to protect his modesty? (Lest you think that this is an attempt to be humorous by this columnist, it is an extract from Dr Sir Jivanji Modi’s most authentic text on the subject.) How many times the twig from a particular tree is required to touch a particular sacred utensil; how priests should lift up the tail of the holy bull (varasia) with the help of purified metallic tongs during a nirangdin ceremony; how many nails will be struck in the ground to create a circuit during the consecration ceremonies of a fire temple or towers of silence. The list is endless; the granular details mind boggling.
Near the end of the ninth century, Zadsparam, the high priest of Sirkan, raised a banner of revolt against ritualistic excesses, which was ruthlessly suppressed by the higher ecclesiastical authorities in Pars and Kerman. Even earlier, in the times of the Pahlavi commentators, controversy flared up over the details of the ritual of bareshnum, the ultimate and most elaborate purification ceremony. Johann Goethe, the famed German scholar poet, while admiring the ancient Persians for their environmental consciousness, criticized the "endless tedium” of consecration and purification.
Illustration by Farzana Cooper
Dastur Maneckji Dhalla, high priest of Karachi and an arch liberal, emphasized that Zoroastrianism was based on ethics, intellect and devotion; not on rituals. In a booklet, Homage Unto Ahura Mazda, published in 1941 in New York, Dhalla penned memorable lyrical and liberal free translations of Zoroastrian prayers. Yasna 44.14 was translated thus:
"Rituals help our spiritual development. They are the accompaniments of religion, but not religion itself. Religion is righteousness. It rests on the individual’s piety, and not on a scrupulous observance of ceremonials or a practice of elaborate lustrations (ceremonial purifications). Let rituals then inspire religious fervor and devotional piety and righteous conduct.”
For the orthodox, however, righteousness alone is not adequate; rituals are a must, in the absence of which a Zoroastrian soul can never progress to the higher realms. There is no higher authority on ritualistic purity than Dastur (Dr) Firoze Kotwal, the high priest of the H. B. Wadia Atash Behram. His mastery of the subject is unparalleled. His scholarly contributions to the most respected publications like The School of Oriental and African Studies, Journal of Mithraic Studies, etc are so well reasoned and copiously researched that even the most diehard ethicist cannot dismiss them. For Kotwal, rituals are an integral part of the faith.
Modi, another eminent scholar, classified Zoroastrian rituals into socio-religious ceremonies like birth, marriage and death; purification ceremonies like nahn and bareshnum including purification of utensils and articles which have been contaminated; initiation ceremonies like navjote or navar and maratab; consecration ceremonies like those for creating circuits around fire temples and towers of silence; and inner and outer liturgical ceremonies like nirangdin and afringan.
The ritualists, if they can be so termed, regard even the Gathas not as the sermons of the Prophet but as sacrificial poetry (source: Kellens and Pirart, 2002 Cantera). Water and fire are the central elements of Zoroastrian rituals. The hearth or domestic fire was sacred; and later graduated into consecrated fires in fire temples, ritualistic centers in themselves. Wells were sacred too, with water used to purify spaces, priests and utensils used in rituals. The 300-plus-year-old Bhikha Behram Well in the Fort area of Bombay, having sweet water with all other wells in its vicinity reportedly having brackish water, is a case in point.
Reformists like Dastur (Dr) Framroze Bode, a protégé of Dhalla and bête noire of Kotwal, convinced North American Parsis that reciting the Gathas alone was sufficient and that rituals were introduced by the exploitative priests in later Sasanian times to enrich themselves. Although Kotwal and Khshnoomists like the late Adi Doctor and Kaikhushroo N. Dastoor (later Dasturji Meherji Rana of Navsari) disagreed violently on theological issues, they were united in extolling the profound significance of observing rituals.
Much after Zoroaster’s pristine message contained in the Gathic verses, elaborate ritualism found its way into the religion, contend the ethicists. Nonsense, bellow the ritualistic: the Prophet was the greatest of the White Magicians who performed several miracles by ritualistic practices. Rituals, when correctly performed with purity and fanatical adherence to procedures, create beneficial effects on various planes of existence — physical, astral, causal and mental. The ethicists are righteously (pun intended) indignant and decry the cult of ritualism which requires various capsule prayer formulae to be recited in a particular manner, before eating, bathing defecating, though not fornicating (however, the Vendidad does contain detailed diktats on discarding soiled garments after coitus).
To be continued
Berjis Desai, lawyer and author of Oh! Those Parsis, and recently Towers of Silence, is a chronicler of the community.