Fire Temple

A modern Zoroastrian Fire Temple (Agiary) in Western India.

Part of a series on Zoroastrianism

Primary topics

Zoroastrianism / Mazdaism Ahura Mazda Zarathustra (Zoroaster) aša (asha) / arta

Angels and demons

Overview of the Angels Amesha Spentas · Yazatas Ahuras · Daevas Angra Mainyu

Scripture and worship

Avesta · Gathas Vendidad The Ahuna Vairya Invocation Fire Temples

Accounts and legends

Dēnkard · Bundahišn Book of Arda Viraf Book of Jamasp Story of Sanjan

History and culture

Zurvanism Calendar · Festivals Marriage Eschatology

Adherents

Zoroastrians in Iran Parsis · Iranis • • • Persecution of Zoroastrians

See also

Index of Related Articles

A Fire Temple, also known as an Atroshan or Agiary, is the principle place of worship among Zoroastrians who revere fire as a symbol of divine purity and illumination. In Zoroastrianism, fire, together with clean water, is an agent of ritual purity. These substances are used to produce clean, white ash for purification ceremonies and constitute a central feature in Zoroastrian rituals. When a Zoroastrian adherent enters a fire temple, according to tradition, he or she will offer dry sandalwood (or other sweet smelling wood) to the fire. The offering is never made directly, but placed in the care of the celebrant priest who, wearing a cloth mask over the nostrils and mouth to prevent pollution from the breath, will then—using a pair of silver tongs—place the offering in the fire. The priest will use a special ladle to proffer the holy ash to the layperson, who in turn daubs it on his or her forehead and eyelids, and may take some home for use after a Kushti ceremony.

Zoroastrian Fire Temple attendance is particularly high during seasonal celebrations (Gahambars), and especially for their New Year (Noruz).

Fire and light are universal symbols of holiness and divinity. The veneration and awe for light in some form or another is to be found in most religions and cultural myths from Prometheus, to Zoroaster, to Biblical accounts of the Star of Bethlehem, and the Hindu festival of Diwali. The worship of divine light is especially evident in the religion of Zoroastrianism, which has had a tremendous influence on the development of the Abrahamic faiths. In the Bible, the only direct encounter with Yahweh has God appearing as divine Light (that is, fire).

Etymology

One of the more common technical terms—in use—for a Zoroastrian fire temple is dar be-mehr, romanized as darb-e mehr or dialectically slurred as dar-e mehr. The etymology of this term, meaning "Mithra's Gate" or "Mithra's Court" is problematic. It has been proposed that the term is a throwback to the age of the shrine cults, the name being retained because all major Zoroastrian rituals were solemnized between sunrise and noon, the time of day especially under Mithra's protection. Etymological theories see a derivation from mithryana (so Meillet) or *mithradana (Gershevitch) or mithraion (Wilcken). It is, moreover, not clear whether the term referred to a consecrated inner sanctum or to the ritual precinct.

Among present-day Iranian Zoroastrians, the term darb-e mehr includes the entire ritual precinct. It is significantly more common than the older atashkada, a Classical Persian language term that together with its middle Persian predecessors (atash-kadag, -man, and -xanag) literally means "house of fire." The older terms have the advantage that they are readily understood even by non-Zoroastrian Iranians. In the early twentieth century, the Bombay Fasilis (see Zoroastrian calendar) revived the term as the name of their first fire temple, and later in that century the Zoroastrians of Tehran revived it for the name of their principal fire temple.

The term darb-e mehr is also common in India, albeit with a slightly different meaning. Until the seventeenth century, the fire (now) at Udvada was the only continuously burning one on the Indian subcontinent. Each of the other settlements had a small building in which rituals were performed, and the fire of which the priests would relight whenever necessary from the embers carried from their own hearth fires. The Parsis called such an unconsecrated building either dar-be mehr or agiary. The latter is the Gujarati language word for "house of fire," and thus a literal translation of atashkada. In recent years, the term dar-be mehr has come to refer to a secondary sacred fire (the dadgah) for daily ritual use that is present at the more prestigious fire temples. Overseas, in particular in North America, Zoroastrians use the term dar-be mehr for both temples that have an eternally burning fire as well as for sites where the fire is only kindled occasionally. This is largely due to the financial support of such places by one Arbab Rustam Guiv, who preferred the dialectic Iranian form.

History

Silver coin of Yazdegerd II with a fire altar and two attendants.

The Zoroastrian cult of fire is much younger than Zoroastrianism itself and appears at approximately the same time as the shrine cult, first evident in the fourth century B.C.E. (roughly contemporaneous with the introduction of Atar as a divinity). There is no allusion to a temple cult of fire in the Avesta proper, nor is there any old Persian language word for one. Moreover, Boyce suggests that the temple cult of fire was instituted in opposition to the image/shrine cults (an alien form of worship inherited from the Babylonians), and "no actual ruins of a fire temple have been identified from before the Parthian period."

That the cult of fire was a doctrinal modification and absent from early Zoroastrianism is still evident in the later Atash Nyash: In the oldest passages of that liturgy, it is the hearth fire that speaks to "all those for whom it cooks the evening and morning meal," which Boyce observes is not consistent with sanctified fire. The temple cult is an even later development: From Herodotus it is known that in the mid-fifth century B.C.E. the Zoroastrians worshipped to the open sky, ascending mounds to light their fires (The Histories, i.131). Strabo confirms this, noting that in the sixth century, the sanctuary at Zela in Cappadocia was an artificial mound, walled in, but open to the sky (Geographica XI.8.4.512).

By the Hellenic Parthian era (250 B.C.E.–226 C.E.), Zoroastrianism had in fact two kinds of places of worship: One, apparently called bagin or ayazan, included sanctuaries dedicated to a specific divinity, constructed in honor of the patron saint/angel of an individual or family and included an icon or effigy of the honored. The second were the atroshan, the "places of burning fire" became more and more prevalent as the iconoclastic movement gained support. Following the rise of the Sassanid dynasty, the shrines to the Yazatas continued to exist, with the statues—by law—either being abandoned as empty sanctuaries, or being replaced by fire altars.

During the Sassanid era (226–650 C.E.), there is no evidence that the fires were categorized according to their sanctity. "It seems probable that there were virtually only two, namely the Atash-i Vahram [literally: "victorious fire," later misunderstood to be the Fire of Bahram, and the lesser Atash-i Adaran, or 'Fire of Fires,' a parish fire, as it were, serving a village or town quarter." Apparently, it was only in the Atash-i Vahram that fire was kept continuously burning, with the Adaran fires being annually relit. While the fires themselves had special names, the structures themselves did not, and it has been suggested that "the prosaic nature of the middle Persian names (kadag, man, and xanag are all words for an ordinary house) perhaps reflect a desire on the part of those who fostered the temple-cult […] to keep it as close as possible in character to the age-old cult of the hearth-fire, and to discourage elaboration."

A part from (relatively) minor fire temples, three were said to derive directly from Ahura Mazda, thus making them the most important in Zoroastrian tradition. These were the "Great Fires" or "Royal Fires" of Adur Burzen-Mihr, Adur Farnbag, and Adur Gushnasp. The legends of the great fires are probably of antiquity, for by the third century C.E., miracles were said to happen at the sites and the fires were popularly associated with other legends such as those of the folktale heroes Fereydun, Jamshid, and Rustam.

The Bundahishn, a Zoroastrian view of creation finished in the eleventh or twelfth century C.E., states that the Great Fires had existed since creation and had been brought forth on the back of the ox Srishok to propagate the faith, dispel doubt, and to protect all humankind. Other texts observe that the Great Fires were also vehicles of propaganda and symbols of imperial sovereignty.

The priests of these respective "Royal Fires" are said to have competed with each other to draw pilgrims by promoting the legends and miracles that were purported to have occurred at their respective sites. Each of the three is also said to have mirrored social and feudal divisions: "The fire which is Farnbag has made its place among the priests; … the fire which is Gūshnasp has made its place among the warriors; … the fire which is Būrzīn-Mitrō has made its place among agriculturists" (Denkard, 6.293). These divisions, from an archaeological point of view, are most revealing, since from at least the first century B.C.E. onwards, society was divided into four, not three, feudal estates.

The Farnbag fire (translated as "the fire Glory-Given" by James Darmesteter) was considered the most venerated of the three because it was seen as the earthly representative of the Atar Spenishta, "Holiest Fire" of Yasna 17.11 and described in a Zend commentary on that verse as the "the one burning in Paradise in the presence of Ohrmazd."

Although "in the eyes of [contemporary] Iranian Zoroastrian priests, the three fires were not 'really existing' temple fires and rather belonged to the mythological realm," several attempts have been made to identify the locations of the Great Fires. In the early twentieth century, A. V. Jackson identified the remains at Takht-i-Suleiman, midway between Urumieh and Hamadan, as the temple of Adur Gushnasp. The location of the Mithra fire (that is, that of Burzen-Mihr), Jackson "identified with reasonable certainty" at being near the village of Mihr half-way between Miandasht and Sabzevar on the Khorasan road to Neyshabur. The Indian (lesser) Bundahishn records the Farnbag fire having been "on the glory-having mountain which is in Khwarezm" but later moved "upon the shining mountain in the district of Kavul just as it there even now remains" (IBd 17.6). That the temple once stood in Khwarezm is also supported by the Greater (Iranian) Bundahishn and by the texts of Zadsparam (11.9). However, according to the Greater Bundahishn, it was moved "upon the shining mountain of Kavarvand in the Kar district" (the rest of the passage is identical to the Indian edition). Darmesteter identified this "Kar" as Kariyan in Pars (Persia proper), "celebrated for its sacred fire which has been transported there from Khvarazm as reported by Masudi." If this identification is correct, the temple of the Farnbag fire then lay 10 miles southwest of Juwun, midway between Jahrom and Lar.

Following the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah (636 C.E.) and the Battle of Nihawānd (642 C.E.), both of which were instrumental to the collapse of the Sassanid Empire and state-sponsored Zoroastrianism, most fire temples in Greater Iran were either destroyed or converted into mosques. Many Zoroastrians fled, taking a fire with them, which although not essential to worship, probably served as a reminder of the faith of their increasingly persecuted community.

Archaeological traces

Did you know?

The oldest remains of a fire temple are on Mount Khajeh in Iran

The oldest remains of what has been identified as a fire-temple are those on Mount Khajeh, near Lake Hamun in Sistan. Only traces of the foundation and ground-plan survive and have been tentatively dated to the third or fourth century B.C.E. The temple was rebuilt during the Parthian era (250 B.C.E.-226 C.E.), and enlarged during Sassanid times (226–650 C.E.).

The characteristic feature of the Sassanid fire temple was its domed sanctuary where the fire-altar stood. This sanctuary always had a square ground plan with a pillar in each corner that then supported the dome (the gombad). Archaeological remains and literary evidence from Zend commentaries on the Avesta suggest that the sanctuary was surrounded by a passage way on all four sides. "On a number of sites the gombad, made usually of rubble masonry with courses of stone, is all that survives, and so such ruins are popularly called in Fars čahār-tāq or 'four arches'."

Ruins of temples of the Sassanid era have been found in various parts of the former empire, mostly in the southwest (Fars, Kerman and Elam), but the biggest and most impressive are those of Adur Gushnasp in Media Minor. Many more ruins are popularly identified as the remains of Zoroastrian fire temples even when their purpose is of evidently secular nature, or are the remains of a temple of the shrine cults. The remains of a fire-altar, most likely constructed during the proselytizing campaign of Yazdegerd II (r. 438-457) against the Christian Armenians, have been found directly beneath the main altar of the Echmiadzin Cathedral, the Mother See of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The remains of a probable fire-temple, later converted to a church, have been found within the ruins of the abandoned medieval Armenian city of Ani.

Classification

The Yazd Atash Behram

Functionally, the fire temples are built to serve the fire within them, and the fire temples are classified (and named) according the grade of fire housed within them. There are three grades of fires, the Atash Dadgah, Atash Adaran, and Atash Behram.

The Atash Dadgah is the lowest grade of sacred fire, and can be consecrated within the course of a few hours by two priests, who alternatingly recite the 72 verses of the Yasna liturgy. Consecration may occasionally include the recitatation of the Vendidad, but this is optional. A lay person may tend the fire when no services are in progress. The term "Dadgah" is not necessarily a consecrated fire, and the term is also applied to the hearth fire, or to the oil lamp found in many Zoroastrian homes.

The next highest grade of fire is the Atash Adaran, the "Fire of fires." It requires a gathering of hearth fire from representatives of the four professional groups (that reflect feudal estates): From a hearth fire of the asronih (the priesthood), the (r)atheshtarih (soldiers and civil servants), the vastaryoshih (farmers and herdsmen) and the hutokshih (artisans and laborers). Eight priests are required to consecrate an Adaran fire and the procedure takes between two and three weeks.

The highest grade of fire is the Atash Behram, "Fire of victory," and its establishment and consecration is the most elaborate of the three. It involves the gathering of 16 different "kinds of fire," that is, fires gathered from 16 different sources, including lightning, fire from a cremation pyre, fire from trades where a furnace is operated, and fires from the hearths as is also the case for the Atash Adaran. Each of the 16 fires is then subject to a purification ritual before it joins the others. 32 priests are required for the consecration ceremony, which can take up to a year to complete.

A temple that maintains an Adaran or Behram fire also maintains at least one Dadgah fire. In contrast to the Adaran and Behram fires, the Dadgah fire is the one at which priests then celebrate the rituals of the faith, and which the public addresses to invoke blessings for a specific individual, a family or an event. Veneration of the greater fires is addressed only to the fire itself—that is, following the consecration of such a fire, only the Atash Nyashes, the litany to the fire in Younger Avestan, is ever recited before it.

A list of the nine Atash Behrams:

• Yezd Atash Behram in Yazd, Iran. Established 1932.
• Iranshah Atash Behram in Udvada, India. Established 1742.
• Desai Atash Behram in Navsari, India. Established 1765.
• Vakil Atash Behram in Surat, India. Established 1823.
• Modi Atash Behram in Surat, India. Established 1823.
• Wadia Atash Behram in Mumbai, India. Established 1830.
• Banaji Atash Behram in Mumbai, India. Established 1845.
• Dadiseth Atash Behram in Mumbai, India. Established 1873.
• Anjuman Atash Behram in Mumbai, India. Established 1897.

The Udvada Atash-Behram

Udvada fire temple, 1905

According to Parsi (Indian Zoroastrian) legend, when (over a thousand years ago) one group of refugees from (greater) Khorasan landed in Western Gujarat, they had the ash of such a fire with them. This ash, it is said, served as the bed for the fire today at Udvada.

This fire temple was not always at Udvada. According to the Qissa-i Sanjan, "Story of Sanjan," the only existing account of the early years of Zoroastrian refugees in India and composed at least six centuries after their arrival, the immigrants established a Atash-Warharan, "victorious fire" at Sanjan. Under threat of war (probably in 1465), the fire was moved to the Bahrot caves 20 km south of Sanjan, where it stayed for 12 years. From there, it was moved to Bansdah, where it stayed for another 14 years before being moved yet again to Navsari, where it would remain until the eighteenth century. It was then moved to Udvada were it burns today.

Although there are numerous eternally burning Zoroastrian fires today, with the exception of the "Fire of Warharan," none of them are more than 250 years old. The legend that the Indian Zoroastrians invented the afrinagan (the metal urn in which a sacred fire today resides) when they moved the fire from Sanjan to the Bahrot caves is unsustainable. Greek historians of the Parthian period reported the use of a metal vase-like urn to transport fire. Sassanid coins of the third-fouth century C.E. likewise reveal a fire in a vase-like container identical in design to the present-day afrinagans. The Indian Zoroastrians do, however, export these and other utensils to their co-religionists the world over.

Zoroastrian Eternal Flame at the Fire Temple in Yazd, Central Iran

Physical attributes

The outer façade of a Zoroastrian fire temple is almost always intentionally nondescript and free of embellishment. This may reflect ancient tradition that the principle purpose of a fire temple is to house a sacred fire, and not to glorify what is otherwise simply a building.

The basic structure of present-day fire temples is always the same. There are no indigenous sources older than the nineteenth century that describe an Iranian fire temple (the ninth century theologian Manushchir observed that they had a standard floor plan, but what this might have been is unknown), and it is possible that the temples there today have features that are originally of Indian origin. On entry one comes into a large space or hall where congregation (also non-religious) or special ceremonies may take place. Off to the side of this (or sometimes a floor level up or down) the devotee enters an anteroom smaller than the hall he/she has just passed through. Connected to this anteroom, or enclosed within it, but not visible from the hall, is the innermost sanctum (in Zoroastrian terminology, the atashgah, literally "place of the fire") in which the actual fire-altar stands.

A temple at which a Yasna service (the principal Zoroastrian act of worship that accompanies the recitation of the Yasna liturgy) may be celebrated will always have, attached to it or on the grounds, at least a well or a stream or other source of "natural" water. This is a critical requirement for the Ab-Zohr, the culminating rite of the Yasna service.

Only priests attached to a fire temple may enter the innermost sanctum itself, which is closed on at least one side and has a double domed roof. The double dome has vents to allow the smoke to escape, but the vents of the outer dome are offset from those of the inner, so preventing debris or rain from entering the inner sanctum. The sanctum is separated from the anteroom by dividers (or walls with very large openings) and is slightly raised with respect to the space around it. The wall(s) of the inner sanctum are almost always tiled or of marble, but are otherwise undecorated. There are no lights—other than that of the fire itself—in the inner sanctum. In Indian-Zoroastrian (not evident in the modern buildings in Iran) tradition the temples are often designed such that direct sunlight does not enter the sanctuary.

In one corner hangs a bell, which is rung five times a day at the boi—literally, "[good] scent"—ceremony, which marks the beginning of each gah, or "watch." Tools for maintaining the fire—which is always fed by wood—are simply hung on the wall, or as is sometimes the case, stored in a small room (or rooms) often reachable only through the sanctum.

In India and in Indian-Zoroastrian communities overseas, non-Zoroastrians are strictly prohibited from entering any space from which one could see the fire(s). This is not a doctrinal requirement (that is, it is not an injunction specified in the Avesta or in the so-called Pahlavi texts) but has nonetheless developed as a tradition. It is however mentioned in a sixteenth century Rivayat epistle (R. 65). In addition, entry into any part of the facility is sometimes reserved for Zoroastrians only. This then precludes the use of temple hall for public (also secular) functions. Zoroastrians insist though that these restrictions are not meant to offend non-Zoroastrians, and point to similar practices in other religions.

References

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• Boyce, Mary. "On the Zoroastrian Temple Cult of Fire." Journal of the American Oriental Society 95(3) (1975): 454-465.
• Boyce, Mary. "On the Orthodoxy of Sasanian Zoroastrianism." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 59(1) (1996): 11-28.
• Boyce, Mary. "Ātaškada." Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 2. Costa Mesa: Mazda Pub., 1987.
• Boyce, Mary. "Dar-e Mehr." Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 6. Costa Mesa: Mazda Pub., 1993.
• Boyce, Mary, and Firoze M. Kotwal. "Irānshāh." Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 13. Costa Mesa: Mazda Pub., 2006.
• Drower, Elizabeth Stephens. "The Role of Fire in Parsi Ritual." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 74(1/2) (1944): 75-89.
• Gnoli, Gherardo. "Bahram in old and middle Iranian texts." Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 3, Costa Mesa: Mazda Pub., 1993.
• Jackson, A.V. Williams. "The Location of the Farnbāg Fire, the Most Ancient of the Zoroastrian Fires." Journal of the American Oriental Society 41(1921): 81–106.
• Kotwal, Firoze M. "Some Observations on the History of the Parsi Dar-i Mihrs." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 37(3) (1974): 664-669.
• Russell, James R. "Atrušan." Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 3. Costa Mesa: Mazda Pub., 1989.
• Shenkar, Michael. "Temple Architecture in the Iranian World before the Macedonian Conquest." Iran and the Caucasus 11(2) (2007): 169-194.
• Stausberg, Michael. Die Religion Zarathushtras, vol. III. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2004. ISBN 3170171208

External links

All links retrieved March 26, 2024.

• Fire Temple Ancient History Encyclopedia
• Atashkadeh-e Yazd (Fire Temple of Yazd) Visit Our Iran

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