Concept -Zoroastrian
Jashan ceremony (the blessing of a home) First evident in the
9th century BCE, the rituals of fire are contemporary with that of Zoroastrianism itself. It appears at approximately the same time as the shrine cult and is roughly contemporaneous with the introduction of
Atar as a divinity. There is no allusion to a temple of fire in the
Avesta proper, nor is there any
Old Persian word for one. That the rituals of fire was a doctrinal modification and absent from early Zoroastrianism is also 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 is an even later development: from
Herodotus it is known that in the mid-5th century BCE the Zoroastrians worshipped to the open sky, ascending mounds to light their fires.
Strabo confirms this, noting that in the 6th century, the sanctuary at Zela in
Cappadocia was an artificial mound, walled in, but open to the sky, although there is no evidence whatsoever that the Zela-sanctuary was Zoroastrian. Although the "burning of fire" was a key element in Zoroastrian worship, the burning of "eternal" fire, as well as the presence of "light" in worship, was also a key element in many other religions. , Persian dynast (
frataraka) of
Persis in the 1st half of 2nd century BCE, ruling from possibly to 164 BCE. The reverse shows him praying in front of a fire temple By the
Parthian Empire (250 BCE – 226 CE), there were two places of worship in Zoroastrianism: one, called
bagin or
ayazan, was a sanctuary dedicated to a specific divinity; it was constructed in honor of the patron saint (or angel) of an individual or family and included an icon or effigy of the honored. The second, the
atroshan, were the "places of burning fire" which 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, but with the statues – by law – either abandoned or replaced by fire altars. shows praying of fire temple Also, as Schippman observed, there is no evidence even during the
Sassanid era (226–650 CE) 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 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". Sasanian coins always depicted a fire altar with flames on the reverse. The
Battle of al-Qādisiyyah (636 CE) and the
Battle of Nihavānd (642 CE) were instrumental to the collapse of the Sassanid Empire and state-sponsored Zoroastrianism; destruction or conversion (mosques) of some fire temples in
Greater Iran followed. The faith was practiced largely by the aristocracy but large numbers of fire temples did not exist. Some fire temples continued with their original purpose although many Zoroastrians fled. Legend says that some took fire with them and it most probably served as a reminder of their faith in an increasingly persecuted community since fire originating from a temple was not a tenet of the religious practice.
Archaeological traces Chinese clay figurine of a
Sogdian man (an
Eastern Iranian person) wearing a distinctive cap and face veil, possibly a camel rider or even a
Zoroastrian priest engaging in a ritual at a fire temple, since face veils were used to avoid contaminating the holy fire with breath or saliva;
Museum of Oriental Art (Turin), Italy 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 3rd or 4th century BCE. The temple was rebuilt during the
Parthian era (250 BCE – 226 CE), and enlarged during
Sassanid times (226–650 CE). 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 passageway 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 are those of Adur Gushnasp in Media Minor (see also
The Great Fires, below). 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, or as is the case of a fort-like fire temple and monastery at
Surkhany, Azerbaijan, that unambiguously belongs to another religion. 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.
Legendary Great Fires Apart 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 (see also
Denkard citation, below), for by the 3rd century CE, 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, an
encyclopaedic collection of
Zoroastrian cosmogony and
cosmology written in
Book Pahlavi, which was finished in the 11th or 12th century CE, 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 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 are archaeologically and sociologically revealing, because they make clear that, since from at least the 1st century BCE onwards, society was divided into four, not three, feudal estates. The Farnbag fire (translated as 'the fire Glory-Given' by
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 it is described in a
Zend commentary on that verse as "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 20th 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, i.e. that of Burzen-Mihr, Jackson "identified with reasonable certainty" as being near the village of
Mihr half-way between
Miandasht and
Sabzevar on the Khorasan road to
Nishapur. 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 "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. ()
Iranshah Atash Behram located in
Gujarat, India According to
Parsi 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' (see
Warharan for etymology) 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 18th century. It was then moved to Udvada where it burns today. with a fire altar and two attendants 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 3rd-4th century CE 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. ==Today==