Today let me share with you all some information about my culture and religion, which is the Zoroastrian religion. I am not going to talk anything much about the religion but I am going to share information about the traditions we follow. Zoroastrian religion is not a very famous and known religion, not many people around the world even know that it exists. We are the most minority religion of the world. The religion has a origin from Iran but in the 8th century they had to flee from there to save the religion from Arab conquest and from that time onwards the majority population is based in India and the ones who still are in Iran are known as Iranis.
To start with, I will give some background of the religion. It was founded in the 6th century BCE by prophet Zarathustra and considered to be the 3rd oldest religion in the world today from all the religions that still exist. When he was born, he already had enemies and they tried to killed him, but miraculously he survived each time and from that time everyone around knew that he was a God sent child. Later he became a prophet with his divine spiritual practices.
In our religion, it is preferred not to get into inter-caste marriage, though the younger generation do not believe in it. When a child is born to Zoroastrian parents, when the child turns to a age of 7, a special ceremony is done for the child which is called the Navjote, which inculcates the child into the Zoroastrian faith and religion. This ceremony cannot be done for a child if either of the parents is non-Zoroastrian, so it is suggested that inter-caste marriage is not done. In the last couple of decades, this has changed a bit, where if a Zoroastrian man marries a non-Zoroastrian girl then the child can still be inculcated into the religion with the Navjote ceremony, but if it's the other way around then cannot. This is also one reason why the community population is falling down so drastically and we all believe that probably in the next few decades we will be all lost forever.
These are some traditional items which are used in the Navjote ceremony.
In our faith, we do not have any idol worship, our practice is to worship fire, and for that we have Fire-Temple, where a sacred consecrated fire keeps burning 24x7 and this effort is made by the priest of the Temple, who ensures that the fire never goes off. Fire is one element of nature which can never be pollute, rather whatever falls in it gets purified, and hence we consider it as the most holy element and worship God through Fire. The 3 main principles that we have to follow are the a righteous life with Good thoughts, words and deeds.
This is the symbol of Asho Farohar, it is a sacred symbol for us and almost every Zoroastrian wears it as a pendant in chain or in any other way.
This is how it is in the Fire-Temple. This picture I clicked in a Zoroastrian museum
And some other sacred items of the Temple
When we die, the disposal of the body happens in a very different way. Again in today's time this is becoming a more irrelevant way. We have something called as a Dokhma system, where there is a big well, in which the body of the deceased person is kept and over a period of time the body gets decomposed in sun and nature and gets eaten up by the vultures. This has been the original system which was followed since the time the religion was established in Iran, but now this system is failing because the Dokhma well which is in the city forest area barely has any vultures and the body decomposing takes much longer then what it was in the olden days. Also during monsoon because of not much Sun, this is a challenge. A lot of people are going in for cremation and I too would want to do the same, because even though it is a tradition I feel it is a very outdated one and not practical in today's time and needs to change.
This is the model of the Well. There is a whole system to it, which needs to be understood.
When Zoroastrians fled from Iran and came to India, at that time the King then was hesitant to allow them and he told them, that my land is already full and he does not have place for them. In that moment, the head priest asked for a glass of milk and sugar separately. He then mixed the sugar in to the milk and told the king, just like how this sugar has dissolved in the milk, we will also mix up and live in harmony on the land. The king was impressed and he allowed them to stay in India. The priest also promised the king that they will do every possible contribution in the growth of the land. Since then there have been many Zoroastrian philanthropists who have contributed towards building hospitals, schools and many such facilities for the service of people.
In today's time even though we being the smallest community in India, yet are very well known and it is majorly because of all these contributions that were made by our ancestors in the past.
Thank you for visiting my blog. 👼🏻👼🏻💖💖🌹🌺🌸
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