आगमे विश्वासटिप्पन्यः

Down the centuries Zoroastrians have been called by those of other faiths ‘fire worshippers’, a name which thinking members of the community indignantly reject, saying that they worship only God. Fire, they declare, was appointed by Zoroaster simply as an object in whose presence men should pray, in order to fix their thoughts on righteousness—for fire, he taught, was the creation of Ardvahišt, the hypostasis of all that is right and just. To pray before fire is thus, they argue, no more than to pray before a crucifix or icon; and, living as they do among Moslems, they sometimes call fire a qibla, the thing, that is, which helps them to turn their thoughts towards God, as the qibla in a mosque helps the worshippers there to turn towards Mecca,

This, the standpoint of the intellectual Zoroastrian, has probably been that of individuals down the ages. The matter is not, however, as simple as it thus sounds. Long before Zoroaster preached, fire had been an object of cult for the Iranian peoples, who venerated the hearth fire as a god within the home—a god whom they worshipped with threefold ritual offerings, of wood, incense, and oblations of fat. This cuit, common to the Indians and Iranians, may well go back to Indo-European times. Among the pagan Iranians it had evidently become enriched, at least for the learned, by the philosophical concept of fire as the pervasive element—the seventh creation which animates all the world; and there were also ethical ideas attaching to it as a symbol of justice, because of its use in judicial ordeals. All these elements of ritual and belief seem to have been gathered together by Zoroaster when, in the light of his own revela tion, he placed fire under the protection of Ardvahist, and enjoined

.TTT

II.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES on his followers that they should pray in its presence, and should think, as they made their offerings to it, of all that it represents.3

The Zoroastrian cult of fire is thus complex, embracing immensely archaic and primitive elements as well as highly developed spiritual ones; and these occur together in the Avestan prayer to fire, the Ataš Niyayes, which contains both morally elevated utterances from the Gathas, and others, clearly even more ancient in essence, which invoke fire as the god upon the hearth, one ‘worthy of sacrifice, worthy of prayer, in the dwellings of men’. Even if it had not been so—if Zoroaster in ordaining prayer in the presence of fire had been introducing something wholly new and symbolic—there can be no doubt that in the course of time fire would have grown to be more than merely an object for all but the most intellectual of his followers; for fire is not only a beautiful thing, but with its movement and changes of state seems to be alive, and can readily be apprehended as sentient and aware of the services of its worshippers, whose at tention it constantly demands. Believers in other faiths have found no difficulty in induing immobile, undemanding statues with life, and it is not to be looked for that Zoroastrians should differ in this respect in their attitude to their icon, fire. Moreover, those who venerate images or pictures have tended to regard these as possessing an individual life, somehow distinct from the general concept of the divinity or saint whom they represent; and similarly most Zoroast rians regard a sacred fire, enthroned in its own consecrated house, . both as representing the whole creation of fire and also as being an individual divine being, who dwells in that particular place and watches over his worshippers, accepting their offerings and hearken ing to their prayers. So strong is this sense of the individual fire as a person that in old Parsi documents a sacred fire is regularly referred to as ‘Sri Ātaš Sāheb’. In Sharifabad the villagers unquestionably regarded their fire as a divinity, powerful and protective; but veneration for it, although profound, was naturally subordinated to veneration for Ohrmazd, who was its Creator, as he is the Creator of all else that is good.

A further complexity—or enrichment in the Zoroastrian cult of fire comes from the dedication of each temple-fire of the highest grade to Verethraghna, the ancient yazad of Victory, now known in

Ataš Niyayes, 7.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES Dari as Varahrām or Vahrām, in Persian as Bahrām. This dedication probably goes back to the time when temple fires were first installed as a development of the cult of the hearth fire—most likely, that is, to the fourth century B.C.5 One can only guess at the reasons for it; but a paramount one was probably that these great fires were seen as warriors in the battle of Zoroastrianism against ignorance and alien faiths, and so were devoted, in a spirit of hope, to Victory. The cult of Verethraghna was evidently immensely popular in ancient Iran, and in time, because of the sense of his power, this yazad was called on by his worshippers not only to grant them success in war, but also to protect them in all the perils of daily life. Thus he came to be invoked, instead of the yazad Čisti, to guard wayfarers, becoming as it were the Zoroastrian St. Botolph or St. Christopher; and in the Seleucid period a shrine to him was carved at Bisutun, beside the great highway that passes under Darius’s rock.In Islamic times the Irani Zoroastrians raised other shrines to him as the Pīr-e rāh-gozār, the ‘Traveller’s Saint’, while the Parsis in Gujarat named him Panth Yazad, the ‘Divinity of the Way’. One of the little Irani shrines stood just to the north of Mazra Kalantar, by the old highway from Isfahan to Yazd, so that travellers could pray there before setting out on the next stage of their journey, or light a candle in thank-offering as they approached the village. There was another such shrine at Ahrestan, a village just outside Yazd on the Shiraz road, where again travellers could pray either before setting out on a journey, or after completing it. The ancient hymn to Varahram (Yašt 14) was regularly recited, moreover, on behalf of those who went on journeys, to keep them under the yazad’s protection.

Varahram was also invoked at other times of peril. Thus within recent memory there was an occasion when fierce storm-foods threatened to sweep away Zoroastrian houses in the hill-village of Taft; and the head of the local anjoman, Namir Mizanian, stood beside the waters with two of the village elders, chanting the hymn to Varahram, and their level dropped and the peril passed. D. Khodadad himself told me of another occasion when he was asked for help by a farmer in Hasanabad against a wolf which had learnt to swim down a ganat stream to get at his sheep. The Dastur stationed

The highway was moved to its present position in the reign of Reza Shah.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES

71 himself at a point by the stream and recited the Varahram Yašt, and when the wolf reached this point he was held in the grip of the water, and as he struggled the farmer was able to hurl a great stone down on his head and kill him. The hymn was also regularly recited at times of sickness and for the demon-afilicted. Varahram’s power to protect and save from all such dangers, everywhere, was celebrated in a song composed in Persian, which was often sung at gatherings on holy days.

Varahram was not only venerated for his immediate power to help, but was longed for as an eschatological figure, whose visible coming would one day herald the restoration of the Good Religion, the overthrow of its persecutors, and the glorious end of time. In the Rivayat of Kamdin Shapur the text is given of a prayer, called the Sprayer to Bahram of miraculous power, king of the Mazda worshipping religion’, which used, it seems, to be recited at the end of every gabambar service. In this, blessings were called down on all who had taken part in the gahambar, and the hope was expressed that the saviours who would restore the faith might come soon, namely Ušedar son of Zardust, Pešotan son of Vištasp, and Varah ram himself. The yazad was thus a focus for the hopes of oppressed Zoroastrians down the centuries; and he still sometimes appeared to his worshippers in dreams, a splendid figure on horseback, usually with two attendants clad either in white or green.

The sacred fire of Sharifabad is, as we have seen, an Ataš Babram; and in the village ardent devotion to the yazad had become fused with veneration for the fire which was named for him, and which was said accordingly to be the most powerful of the village Pirs. ‘Pir’, meaning ‘old’, ‘venerable’, is a word used by Irani Moslems for a saint whose tomb is made into a shrine (in the manner of the ancient Zoroastrian shrines to yazads), and then, by extension, the word is applied to the tomb itself; and in due course the Zoroastrians adopted it for their own shrines, probably partly to gain protection for them, since Moslems sometimes hesitated to outrage the sanctuary of even an alien Pir, for fear of supernatural vengeance. The Sharif abadis thus identified their sacred fire as a yazad by calling it a Pir; and moreover they named it, not the ‘Fire of Varahram’, Atas-e Varahram, but Shah Varahram Izede Pak (which may be roughly rendered as ‘King Varabram, the holy Divine One’), as if the fire

& See Riv., Unvala, i. 405-8; Dhabhar, 318, ! See, e.g., below, p. 258.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES were actually the divinity. They thus added a further elaboration to the already highly complex and significant cult of fire; but this particular development was plainly more due to feeling, born of deep popular devotion to both fire and yazad, than based on theological reasoning

With so many elements contributing to its veneration, it is not surprising that their ancient Ataš Varahram should have been at the centre of the villagers’ affections and of their religious lives. Not only the priest, but a number of his parishioners prayed daily in its temple, and almost all did so on special occasions. Many religious services were solemnized there throughout the year, and every domestic ritual and act of worship was linked to the sacred fire through the observance whereby embers from any other fire which had been consecrated by the recital of Avesta were carried to the temple to grow cold near it. This was the general custom throughout the Yazdi region, and used to be observed also in Kerman;t and it follows injunctions laid down in the Persian Rivayats. In these old texts it is said that embers from household fires should be taken to what is in effect the parish church, the Atas-e Adaran; and that once a year embers from the various Ataš-e Adarans, which were regarded as servitors of the ‘cathedral’ fires, should be carried, with gifts, to the nearest Atas-e Varahram;“I but in Sharifabad the household embers were taken perforce direct to the Ataš-e Varahram itself.

Although this custom is enjoined in the Rivayats, nothing is said there of how the embers should be disposed of at the fire-temple, and various practices prevailed in the Yazdi area, which were ob served in different villages without any discernible geographic pattern. Thus in a number of fire-temples there was a small slanting bole made through the thickness of an outer wall (which might be as much as two or three feet). This was called the lok-e taš, ‘hole for the fire’, and into it the laity placed the embers. I2 In the majority

10 See ‘Fire-temples of Kerman’, 63-4.

It See Riv., Unvala, i. 67, 68, 72; Dhabhar, 56, 57, 60, 61. Here it is stated that embers from a household fire should be carried to the fire-temple after the cooking of three successive meals, or every three days, and in one Rivayat it is even said that this should be done for every fire that has been used to bake bread; but perhaps such injunctions represent an excess of priestly zeal, and were quietly ignored by the laity. In the 1960s the practice was carried out only with consecrated fires.

12 These lok-e tas varied in detail. That at Ahrestan was triangular in shape, with a framework of three stones and a little mud-brick hood above it; and the round one at Mobareke was covered by a wooden shutter, to be pulled up by

‘SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES

73 of such cases (at Mazra Kalantar, Ja’farabad, Kanu, Ahgestan, Mobareke, Zainabad, and Taft), this hole passed directly into the fire-sanctuary (the ganza-tas), where the embers fell into a specially made recess; and at Mazra Kalantar and Taft–two villages as far apart as possible—a metal rod passed between this recess and the pillar bearing the sacred fire, making a ritual connection or paivand between them. This was formerly the case also at the old Bar-e Mihr-e mas or “Great Fire-Temple’ in Yazd. In one village, Khor ramshah, the lok-e taš let the embers fall into a tiny room beside the fire-sanctuary. In the other group of villages (which included Sharif abad itself, with Elabad, Aliabad, Qasimabad, Kuče Buyuk, Mori abad, and Khairabad), there was no lok-e taš, and the embers were variously disposed of. In Moriabad and Khairabad a big metal vessel, set on a stone, was kept for this purpose in one of the outer rooms. At Qasimabad a sort of trough to receive them, about eight inches wide and several deep, was let into the wall opposite the door of the fire-sanctuary; and at Sharifabad itself the embers were put either into a metal vessel, if this stood ready, or into a corner of the outer porch. In all these places at least once a day the atašband of the temple took up some of the ashes (which had fused their entity by lying together) and carried them into the fire-sanctuary, where he placed them on the rim of the pillar-altar, to make paivand with the ash at the edge of the sacred fire.13 Only one village, as far as I could learn, in a measure combined these different observances. This was Elabad, where embers from fires consecrated at major ceremonies (such as gahambars, and the funerary rites of čārom, sīröza and the first sål) were put on a mud-brick shelf near the fire sanctuary, and the ash was later carried in to the sacred fire in this way; but embers from fires sanctified at lesser rituals (such as subsequent sals, and minor domestic rites) were put in a recess in a wall at the back of the temple kitchen. This wall was common to it and to the fire-sanctuary, so that there was a paivand between these embers and the place of the sacred fire, as was the case with those put through the lok-e taš at Khorramshah. The only perplexing

a chain. At Jarfarabad the plain round hole was about 8 feet above the level of the lane, with two steps for mounting up to it (though on the other side of the wall the embers dropped to the same ground level again); whereas at Kanu the tri angular, stone-edged hole (shaped like that at Ahrestan) was set only about 4 feet from the ground, Most, however, were placed at a comfortable level for the aver age adult to use, and were uncovered, the thickness of the wall being sufficient protection.

13 Cf. above, p. 59.

.74

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES thing about such minor divergences is that they should have come into being in a relatively small area served by a closely knit com munity of priests. Under the system of assigning husts by lot these priests, moreover, regularly exchanged their parishes, and so had to adapt themselves to the different local usages, it beiog the laity who, in this and similar small matters, maintained the tradition and continuity.

It was this sense of tradition which had preserved Sharifabad’s sacred fire as an Atas Babram; for the villagers had known and loved it for too long for it to occur to them that its entity and character could change. Elsewhere it has been held that when an Ataš Bahram can no longer be served with the rites proper to a fire of this rank (which demand the attendance of at least two priests), then it must perforce be reduced to being a fire of the second rank, an Atas-e Adaran. This was done early this century with the old Ataš Bahram in Kerman.14 Sharifabad continued, however, to reverence its ancient fire as an Ataš Bahram, while serving it as best it could. In 1964 the one priest, D. Khodadad, was the official ‘servitor of the fire’, the atašband; but since his many parish duties often called him away, an elderly layman, Rustam-e Rashid, was appointed his deputy. Only these two ever entered the fire-chamber, although Rustam’s wife Piruza cared for the rest of the temple. An Ataš Bahram should, it is held, be kept always burning brightly, as befits the king of fires; and the ceremony of böy dādan, that is, of offering it dry wood and incense, should be performed with elaborate ceremony at the beginning of each of the five watches of the day.is This makes great demands in both fuel and time, and the Sharifabadi fire was tended perforce with the simpler sites of a village fire, that is, a fire of the third rank, an Ataš-e Dadgāh, which may be cared for by a layman, provided that he is a man of upright character and keeps the laws of purity. The boy ceremony took place only once in the twenty-four hours, in the evening. All that was usually apparent of the fire, therefore, was a mound of soft grey wood-ash.16 Each

14 This happened after the death in 1901 of the last Kermani Dastur Dasturan, D. Rustame Jehangir.

15 See Modi, CC, 218–26. The third traditional offering, the ātas-zöhr or oblation of fat, had been abandoned for decades by even the most conservative Iranis, although ritual traces of it remained. (See, e.g., “Mihragan’, 113, and below, p. 157.)

16 Cf. the descriptions of sacred fires given by Strabo, XV. 3. 14, and Pausanias, V. 27. 5-6.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES

75 day, to sustain it, the fire received a small thick billet of dry wood, with the bark carefully removed so that there might be no impurity clinging to it. Pomegranate was held to be the best for this purpose, because it is close-grained and slow-burning; next, wood from the apricot or pistachio tree. All wood for the sacred fire was cut and stacked in summer, so that it could dry out thoroughly before use. The atašband, while reciting the appropriate Avestan prayers (which always included the Ataš Niyayes), stood before the fire facing south, with the metal bara in his hand. With this he gently pushed aside the ash from the glowing embers of the previous day’s billet, and set the new one directly upon these. He then drew the warm ash back around it, so that it was almost embedded, and scattered on top of it a handful of kūzēr (the hard sheath of the com stalk, chopped small), which quickly caught light and blazed up. He then sprinkled on the flames a little frankincense, and the sweet smell filled the small chamber, thus completing the twofold offering. Only at high festivals did D. Khodadad make the full ceremonial offering to the fire of a ’throne’, that is, six thinnish pieces of wood placed criss-cross, four below and two above, which soon caught fire and burnt brightly above the heap of ash,17

There was no window in the fire-chamber, and the walls were black with fragraot wood smoke, making it very dark; but a lamp, filled with ‘pure oil, was kept always burning there, within a span’s length of the fire.18 Until recently the sacred fire in this dark sanctu ary, with its attendant lamp, was an unseen presence for most of its worshippers, beloved, reverenced, but never beheld. This was the case with all the sacred fires of Iran, and the reason for it is plain: as the persecution of Zoroastrians grew more intense, it became too dangerous to enthrone a fire in the sight of the congregation, for this meant that if Moslems broke into the building it was immediately visible, and could all too easily be desecrated or extinguished, Accordingly it became the custom, with fires of whatever grade, to

17 For the throne of wood, see Modi, CC, 221. Once when I was in Cham with D. Khodadad he was called on to show the hušt-mobed there (who had not his own thorough training) how to offer the ’throne’. Io some of the other Yazdi villages the sacred fire was still tended several times a day in 1964. Thus in Khairabad the bõy ceremony was performed morning and evening, and at Mobareke and Moriabad at noon as well—that is, io all three daylight watches. For these ’extra’ observances only thin twigs or kuzer were used, with incense, At Jarfarabad the atašband said that he put a new billet of wood on the fire only when this was necessary, which was sometimes every other day.

18 On the preparation of the oil for this lamp see below, p. 98.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES make the sanctuary very small and to hide it away in the furthest recesses of the building, with access only by a tiny inconspicuous door, no bigger than a cupboard’s, through which the atašband had to creep on hands and knees. 19 Since only priests might enter the fire chamber, the congregation at large gave up the joy of seeing their sacred fire for the better hope of preserving it unharmed. This development must have taken place after the migration of the Parsis, for they have kept the antique custom of setting the sacred fire in an open sanctuary, so that all who enter its temple can see it.20

It was presurably to compensate for this shutting away of the ever-burning fire that the Iranis developed the custom (unknown to the Parsis) of setting in the hall of a fire-temple a pillar or faltar’ which was a replica of the one which bore the sacred fire, and was called by the same name, that is, ādokhš or kalak.21 These pillars were made of mud-brick, faced with such fine, hard plaster that it looked like stone. On the ones in the outer hall a fire could be set for communal or individual acts of worship, in whose presence the laity could pray and make their offerings. Such a fire was probably most often created from embers brought out by the atašband from the sacred fire itself; and when the prayers had been said, or the ritual completed, these embers would be carried back again to grow cold in the fire-sanctuary, leaving only an empty pillar in the outer ball to baffle an intruder. This remained the custom, established through centuries of observance, in Sharifabad and all the villages of the Yazdi area. In the hall of the Sharifabadi Ataš Varahran, as well as a tall, eight-sided pillar, there was a smaller, round one of solid stone, blackish in colour. This unusual adokhš had been rescued from the

19 Despite the extensive rebuilding of the old fire-temples, a number of such tiny doors could still be seen in 1964. Thus, for example, in the dignified and charming fire-temple of Mobareke the old fire sanctuary had been retained, and was entered by a small door of solid metal, about 4 by 21 feet square, and set, like a cupboard door, about 1 foot above the ground. There was a similar door into the sanctuary at Jarfarabad, and an even tinier wooden one, no more than 3 feet high, looking just like a cupboard door, into the ganza-las at Kanu. Elabad too had a little wooden door.

20 The evidence to establish this as the ancient custom is slight, but archaeo logists have identified a number of temple ruins from Sasanian times with an ambulatory around a gumbad or domed sanctuary, and texts show that the walls of this sanctuary had openings in them. See in detail Schippmann, Die iranischen Feuerheiligtümer, under the Saşanian period (Tafel III and index); and further ‘On the Zoroastrian temple-cult of fire’, 463-4.

21 On the names for the ‘fire-altar’ see W. Eilers, ‘Herd und Feuerstätte jo Iran’, Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 12, 1974, 307–38.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES

77 fire-temple of the neighbouring village of Ahmedabad, before this was abandoned;22 and as well as a round depression in its top to contain fire, it had four small saucer-like hollows round the rim to serve as oil-lamps, with an incision leading to the edge of the stone for the wick, and between these, four little holes as sockets for candles.

The bigger, octagonal pillar was handsome and imposing, and stood in the very middle of a square hall which had a big central dome and four pesgams opening out of it, where a large congregation could gather. Down to the end of the last century the Ataš Varahram of Sharifabad still burnt in a lowly mud-brick building, looking outwardly like any other village house; but one of the villagers, Khodamurad-e Noshiravan, took a vow to build it a worthier temple.23 The circumstances were these: he was a poor farmer who one snowy winter night fell down a qanat well at the edge of the village fields. There was no way to get out, and it seemed certain that he would freeze to death. In this moment of peril he prayed to Shah Varahram Ized, and vowed that if he were rescued he would rebuild the house of his sacred fire. It happened that two bulls kept as pack-animals at a mill nearby fell to fighting, and the weaker one broke out and ran away across the fields. The miller, in chasing it, passed close to the well, and Khodamurad called out to him. At first the startled man thought his was the voice of a jinn, coming from under the earth, but once reassured he hurried for ropes and hauled him out. Khodamurad was then faced in his poverty with the obligation of his vow; and so he left the village and went to Bombay, where he engaged in trade, sending back to Sharifabad every anna that he could save. It took him years to earn enough money for his purpose, and when at last he had remitted a sufficient sum, he returned to Sharifabad and spent the rest of his life there in con tented poverty. The new temple was finished in 1903, which was a time when, although a number of decrees had been passed to im prove the lot of Irani Zoroastrians, their lives were still full of danger. Accordingly, although the new temple of Shah Varahram is a dig. nified and pleasing building, whose dome rises proudly above the roofs of the surrounding houses,24 nevertheless it has double entry

22 See above, p. 8 D. 19.

23 For the following story, and all the information about the older building that was replaced by Khodamurad’s, I am indebted to Agha Rustam, who had learnt these things from his father.

24 The distinguished French archaeologist M. Siroux was so impressed by the

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES doors for protection, and the fire-sanctuary is still a small incon spicuous room hidden at the back of the main hall.25 Moreover, this had originally a little door of solid wood, which was exactly like that of another small room (the yazišn-gāh) at the opposite comer of the building, so that there was nothing to identify it to an intruder.

About half a century after Khodamurad’s building was completed, the Sharifabadi Anjoman repaired it and introduced some modifica tions. By then a number of the villagers had been in Bombay and had become familiar there with the Parsi practice of setting a sacred fire, oot on a stone altar, as is the ancient custom of Iran, but in a big silvery metal vase, like a huge goblet-a larger version of the vase, called an afrīnagān, in which fire is kept burning at religious cere monies.26 This innovation was probably made by the Parsis late in the fifteenth century, after they had been forced to move their one sacred fire from place to place for safety over a number of years, and had presumably become accustomed to keeping it in a portable con tainer; and so great was the prestige enjoyed by the Indian com munity with their co-religionists since the mid nineteenth century that gradually this practice was adopted in the larger Irani fire-temples also, notably in those of Tehran, Yazd, and Kerman. (It was un doubtedly thought that it represented the ancient custom, and that such handsome and costly vases were one of the objects which had been plundered from Irani temples during the years of oppression; but in fact excavations of ancient sites, and antique rock carvings,

new temple that he made a detailed study of it, attributiog it in part to Safavid times: see his article ‘Le temple zoroastrien de Sharifābād’, Āthár-é Frān, . i. 1938, 83-7. It is evident from his remarks on p. 85 that he mistook the villagers’ statements about the antiquity of the fire itself—and possibly of the previous fire-temple-as referring to the present building. Similar mistakes have been made by G. Gropp in his articles on Zoroastrian sacred buildings. In fact 10 impressive Zoroastrian building erected in Islamic times in Iran belongs to a date earlier than the latter part of the nineteenth century. The architect of Khoda murad’s building must necessarily have been a Moslem, since Zoroastrians had no experience then of building in anything but mud-brick; and he evidently adapted traditional architectural forms to the Zoroastrians’ special requirements, as was the case with other Yazdi fire-temples. Modifications (such as the placing of the altar in the fire-sanctuary, or the making of a lok-e tas) could be introduced after the Moslem workers had finished, Some of the rebuilt temples were in fluenced by Parsi prototypes, which in their tum are all relatively modern structures.

25 See Siroux’s plan, art. cit., p. 84. 26 It seems in fact to derive its name from the most frequently celebrated of the ‘outer’ services, namely the ceremony of praise, the Afrinagan. The Parsis pronounce the name as afargâniun (see Modi, CC, index, s.v.); the Iranis (when speaking Dari) as aprigun (see Sorushian, Farhang, I).

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79 show that it is the pillar-altar which represents the genuine old tradition.) So in the 1950s the Sharifabadis in their turn imported a large German-silver vase from Bombay, with which they replaced the old solid pillar in the fire-sanctuary. This vase stands on a square stone base, about two inches high, and has a big cowl above it, to draw up the smoke. At the same time a brass beli, also acquired from India, was hung just inside the sanctuary door, to be rung by the atašband at the boy ceremony. This again is Parsi custom,27 unknown to the Iranis. There is no reference to it in the old liturgical books of the faith, but there are many gaps in these, and so it seems impossible to determine whether this is another Parsi innovation, now adopted in the Ataš Bahrams of Iran, or an old usage abandoned in Iran during the times of persecution, when worship had to be as inconspicuous as possible. Subsequently a Parşi priest, visiting Sharifabad, persuaded the village elders that it was proper that the sacred fire should be visible to all the congregation, and so, when a new and larger door was made for the sanctuary, all of metal, it was fitted with a small grille at eye-level; but since the fire-vase was set where the old pillar-altar had stood, a little away from the door, the fire could be seen only by standing close to this grille and looking sideways through it. The villagers themselves did not seem to value the concession, perhaps feeling that to gaze thus on the sacred fire itself had an element of sacrilege; and they continued in the main to say their prayers and pay their devotions to fire set on the big pillar in the outer hall.28 Nowadays, when matches make it easy to light a fire, this is often kindled afresh rather than being made from embers from the sacred fire. This pillar itself was subsequently faced with grey tiles, with which the fire-chamber was lined, and the whole building paved—a further embellishment to their beloved shrine carried out by the villagers in 1961. The intention behind this was mainly to make it easier to keep the temple ritually pure, glazed

27 See Modi, CC, 225.

28 The Sharifabadis were not alone in this. Thus several of the village fire temples (for example, at Khairabad, Qasimabad, Aliabad, Narseabad, and Cham) had been rebuilt with Parsi-type open grilles in the walls of their sanctuaries; but in each case these grilles were covered, in 1964, either with wooden shutters or with thick curtains, which, it was said, were never moved. An exception was in the striking and unusual fire-temple of Kuče Buyuk (rebuilt in 1890). Here the sanctuary was an octagonal brick room, about 14 feet high, set in the middle of a well-like space and looking itself not unlike a huge pillar-altar, This had a door and three big shuttered grilles, each about 7 feet high, which were sometimes opened to give a full view of the fire.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES tiles being as impervious and washable as stone. (Previously only the fire-chamber itself had been paved, with small pebble-stones, this being all that was possible during the years of oppression.) The tiles had every advantage in summer, but during the short, sharp winters they struck bitterly cold underfoot-for Zoroastrians observe the widespread custom of removing their shoes when entering a holy place, while keeping their heads covered.

As we have seen, the villagers knew their sacred fire as Shah Varahram Ized. Why it is that throughout the Irani community the yazad should receive the title ‘King’ is a matter of some uncertainty. It has been suggested that this came about through a contamination in popular legend between the divinity and Shah Vahram Cobin, the celebrated Parthian pretender of the sixth century A.D.;29 but it is perhaps rather that the warrior-yazad, who will one day appear leading his armies, came to be thought of in terms of a mortal king, who in ancient days was expected to lead his forces into battle. Whatever the true explanation, it is a fact that Varabram is regularly accorded this title, and it seems probable that it originated with him among the yazads, and that its use was then extended as an honorific, so that by now the title “Shah’ may be set before the name of any divine person, regardless of congruity. So the other great sacred fire of the village was known there as Shah Ador Khara Ized, literally ‘King Fire-Khara, the Divine One’. Its shrine was called the Bar-e Mihr-e kūčīk, the “Little fire-temple’; and this continued to be a humble mud-brick building until the 1940s, when the village Anjoman erected a more stately shrine, which raises a slightly smaller but still dignified dome close beside that of Shah Varabram.30

It may at first sight seem strange that it was an empty sanctuary which was thus rebuilt in honour of Shah Alor Khara. It was, it seems, not long after the completion of the new temple of Shah Varahrams that it became apparent that the cost of maintaining

29 See K. Czeglédy, ‘Bahrām Čobin and the Persian apocalyptic literature’, Acta Orient. Hung., viii/I, 1958, 21-43.

10 This rebuilding had not taken place when M. Siroux visited the village (see p. 77 n. 24). He was evidently told of the existence of Zoroastrian sanctuaries other than the Atas Bahram, but received a confused impression that these were all fire-temples, which had been seized by Moslems. See further p. 82 n. 34, below.

If I was unable to learn a precise date for this event, but was told, in 1964, that only those aged sixty or more could remember Shah Ador Khara burniog in his own shrine.

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SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES two sacred fires, even with simplified rites, was growing to be too great; for wood was becoming ever more scarce and expensive in the Yazdi area, and frankincense had to be imported at ever-increasing cost for the daily boy ceremony. So after grave deliberations the villagers decided to unite their two great fires to burn as one. This the Parsis most strictly maintain must never be done, since every sacred fire has its own individual life; but all that one can say is that the orthodox Sharifabadis, trapped by circumstances, did it, in a spirit of reverence and devotion. Both fires were, after all, of the same grade, Ataš Bahrams; and although the villagers now venerated the one conjoined fire as Shah Varahram, they did not forget Shah Ador Khara. Not only was his shrine rebuilt, but it was lovingly maintained. It too had the central hall tiled, and an atašband was regularly appointed to care for the building;32 and apart from individual devotions, every year certain other communal rites were solemnized there and attended by a large congregation.

Loyalty such as this was characteristic of the Sharifabadis, and indeed of the Irani Zoroastrians as a whole, for without this quality they would not have been ready to suffer so much for their faith. Moreover, the maintenance of the temple of Shah Alor Khara becomes less remarkable when one realizes that the Sharifabadis, in common with all their Irani co-religionists, were accustomed to worshipping in empty shrines as well as in fire-temples. Such shrines were ordinarily dedicated to individual yazads, and at a remote period–that is, in late Achaemenian and Parthian times—they would have contained a statue to the divinity. Then an iconoclastic movement swept all images away.33 Sometimes the statue was re placed by a sacred fire, but sometimes (presumably when there was difficulty in bearing the cost of this) the shrine, it seems, was left empty, with a fire being kindled there only on holy days and at special observances, as today in the outer balls of fire-temples. Possibly it is this historical background, possibly simply a tendency in an unwritten language to blur the nice distinctions between words, which leads the Sharifabadis to use the same terms inter changeably in speaking of their fire-temples or their empty shrines; that is to say, they may call the shrine a Bar-e Mihr, or the fire temple a Pir, or refer to any or all of them by the Arabo-Persian

32 In 1964 this was Khosrow-e Tirandaz, whose wife, Gulbanu-e Kai Khosrow, did most of the caretaking.

33 See ‘Iconoclasm among the Zoroastrians’.

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SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES word ma’bad, place of worship’ (which probably replaced a deriva tive of Old Persian āyadana).34 The guardian of a shrine, although officially termed its khādem or ‘servitor’, was also commonly spoken of as its atašband. This loss of verbal distinctions must have made it all the easier to come to regard the temple of the Ataš Varabram as a shrine to Varahram Ized, on the pattern of the empty sanctuaries. This step could the more readily be taken because there existed a famous Pir-e Shah Varahram Ized—that is, an empty shrine dedi cated to the yazad-in Kerman,35 (In recent times shrines with this dedication, which have become greatly beloved, have been founded also in the Yazdi village of Khorramshah, 36 and in Tehran.37)

Not every Zoroastrian village had empty shrines, and some which had possessed only what they called ’little Pirs’, often no more than niches for candles, set beside water or a tree. Thus Mazra Kalantar, for instance, had three ’little Pirs’ devoted to water. One was a tiny shrine-room near its lower pool, with just space round the pillar-altar for three or four people. The other two, the Pir-e Irsakh,

34 On the former terms for fire-temples and image-shrines see ibid. 98-9, and ‘On the Zoroastrian temple-cult of fire’, 456, 463. It was probably these generalized usages of modern times which prevented M. Siroux obtaining a clearer picture of the nature of the Sharifabadi sanctuaries (see p. 80 D. 30).

35 On this shrine see Sorushian, Farhang, 210; G, Gropp, ‘Die rezepten Feuertempel der Zarathustrier (II)’, AMI, N.F. 4, 1971, 272–3.

36 No exact date is known for the creation of this shrine, but it is a matter of recent tradition that formerly a great plane stood there, in the village square. A man tried to fell this tree, but the sap seemed to him to flow like blood beneath his axe (cf. p. 256, below), and he desisted and told his fellows, and they built the sbripe. This became sanctified by other small miracles, and grew to be greatly Vederated. In 1964 it had been recently repaired, and was then a biggish barrel vaulted room, tiled and with whitewashed ceiling. An octagonal pillar-altar stood at the further eod, and against one of its sides was a shorter pillar, with a knife kept on it, for offering fruits. In the wall behind was a niche for candles. For details of the building itself see Gropp, art. cit, 278-9.

17 This shrine, in the old quarter of Amiriye, had been built (it was said) in the 1830s, at a time when there were only five or six Zoroastrian families in Tehran. The original small room, square and windowless, is incorporated in the modern brick building, which is provided with salons, a kitchen, and tables and chairs in the carpeted main room. In the shrine-room the old pillar-altar has been replaced by a round metal tray on a stand, and there is a slab-table along one wall. Both are usually bright with candles, for the shrine is much loved. I was once privileged to visit it as the guest of Mobed Rustam Shahzadi, who was fulfilling a vow made with regard to his son’s becoming a student. A ‘gahambar-e toji’ was celebrated, the ritual and observances being essentially just as they would have been in Sharifabad. A difference, in the big city, was that the shrine was also full of the murmured prayers of other worshippers, who performed their own individual devotions and paid no heed to the gahambar, whereas in Sharifabad this would have been a commuoal act involving everyone present.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES

83 ‘Shrine of the (Upper) Pool’, and Pir-e Sar-e Čašmak, ‘Shrine at the Spring’, were only candle-niches. A candle was set in these every night by a family which lived nearby, various people giving the candies as votive offerings throughout the year. Qasimabad had a Pir-e Senjed, a candle-niche set in a lane where a stream flowed under an oleaster (senjed tree, and there were many other similar small wayside shrines.

Sharifabad had no ’little Pirs’ of this kind, but it possessed two ‘great Pirs’, namely ancient and beloved shrines to Shah Mihr Ized and Shah Teštar Ized, the Avestan Mithra and Tištrya. Tištrya became Linked, probably in early Achaemenian times, with a Western Iranian divinity, Tīri, and appropriated his feast-day, Tīragan. Mihragan and Tiragan, with No Ruz, were the only Zoroastrian feasts to win mention in the Talmud, which is an in dication of their popularity; and, apart from the gahambars, they seem to have been the most widely celebrated of all the festivals of ancient Iran. There was a major shrine to Shah Mihr Ized at Kerman, which had a number of ‘great Pirs*.38 Yazd, however, had none;39 and the existence of two at Sharifabad (with that to Teštar being apparently unique) seems yet another feature of its religious life which the village owed to the long residence there of the priests, and the coming of many pilgrims to venerate its sacred fires.

The greatness of the ‘great Pirs’ lay in their ancientness and extreme sanctity, and not in the material splendour of their shrines for naturally during the centuries of oppression these, like the fire temples, had to be as inconspicuous as possible, with nothing either within or without to tempt the spoliator. The two ‘great Pirs’ of Sharifabad were far apart, for Teštar, the yazad who brings rain, had his shrine outside the village, among fields, whereas Mihr, who is intimately linked with the cult, had his close to the two fire-temples.

38 See Sorushian, Farhang, 209. There were several small shrines (some of recent date) to Mihr Ized in the Yazdi villages.

19 On the Pir-e Vamiro there see below, p. 89. There was also the Pir-e Eliath, a large complex on the outskirts of the old town, near the Mahalle-ye Dasturan. This was set in what had once been a beautiful garden, drought stricken in 1964. There was a well in the shrine room which was an object of veneration. Although the dedication was to a Moslem rajal al-ghaib (see ‘Bibi Shahrbanu .:.’, 30-1), the well-instructed said that this was simply a protective usage, and that the shrine was really to the yazad Sroš. This had been forgotten by most; but it was generally believed that Eliath came at dawn to houses which had already been swept and where water had been sprinkled in the courtyard and there was fragrance, which is orthodox belief about Sroš (see above, p. 30). Yazd also had a ’little Pir”, the Pir-e Kuške kučīk, in the old behdin quarter.

Pour

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES Both shrides were rebuilt at about the same time as the temple of Ador Khara, that is, in the 1940s; and many of the villagers could remember the former nud-brick buildings, tiny and dilapidated, and each with so small a door that worshippers had to creep in on hands and knees. Since the Pir-e Mihr Ized was hemmed in by houses, there was not much scope for enlarging it at the rebuilding; and it remained a simple room, domed and square, at the centre of which was one of the eight-sided pillar-altars. characteristic of Sharifabad. Ordinarily this altar stood empty; but, at the expense of the Anjoman, a supply of brushwood was kept at this and other shrines, so that any one who wished could light a fire on the altar, and pray and offer incense. Worshippers themselves brought more wood, and also gifts of pure oil for the sanctuary lamp, candles and such fragrant offerings as might be in season-sweet-smelling flowers or herbs, or sun-warmed fruits, which were laid on the rim of the altar. No one ever went empty-handed to a holy place, although the gift which he brought might be of the humblest. There was no rigidly prescribed pattern of behaviour for approaching the divinity, but many touched the door-sill before entering in a graceful gesture of obeisance, and uttered an invocation such as “Ya Shah Mihr Ized!

The occasions which took a villager to a Pir were as various as those which take a Roman Catholic (for example) to the shrine of his patron saiat. He might go, that is, to ask a boon of the yazad, or to render thanks for one already granted, or to make an act of con trition for some offence; or his visit might simply be to offer venera tion, and this was especially the case on festival days, such as during the six gabambars, when some of the pious went to all the village shrines in turn. Each sanctuary, moreover, was thronged on its own particular days, that is, the name-days of the yazad himself, which for Mihr are the sixteenth of every month, with the sixteenth of the seventh month being the holiest of all, since this is Ruz Mihr of Mah Mihr, the first day of the Jašn-e Mihr Ized 40 when all who could visited

40 His feast was known throughout the Yazdi area by this name, but Shirine Set Hakimi (see above, p. 62) said that she could remember it being called “Miragun’ in Sharifabad, and this old name had been revived by the Tehrani Anjoman. The celebration of the feast in Sharifabad differed in some small respects from that in Mazrar Kalantar (for which see ‘Mihragan’). Thus the blood sacrifice was offered in each household, as in Mazar, but the tongue was taken at once to the priest. The carcass was roasted with the same ritual, but when it was brought out of the oven the priest came to the house and recited the Drone Mihr Tzed over it (for details of the ritual see art. cit. 112-13). The carcass, thus

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES

85 his shrine to pray and make offerings. Because of the sanctity of this feast, its ancient communal rites were celebrated at the Ataš Varah ram; and the greatest observance which took place at Mihr’s own shrine was the lighting outside it of a huge fire just after sunset on the feast of Sada, Mihr Ized being lord of both fire and sun.41

Teštar too was a much-loved yazad, but latterly circumstances had combined to dim the lustre both of his festival and his shrine. The oldest villagers could tell of charming customs, connected with rain-bringing, which belonged to the five-day Jašn-e Tir-o-Teštar,42 but almost all that survived of these by the 1960s was merry-making by young people and children, who had a happy licence, on Ruz Tir of Mah Tir, to splash and duck one another in the village streams. As for the shrine of Shah Teštar Ized, this was among fields on the Ardekani side of the village, a position which gave scope at the rebuilding; and the new sanctuary was unusually light and airy, a domed hall, some fourteen feet square, with doors on all four sides, and in the middle an octagonal pillar-altar. When I was taken to visit it, there was a clay afrinagan beside this altar, that is, a simple clay pan to hold fire, with a hollow handle to give a draught. Such humble afrinagans (rather than the silvery vases now in general use) were, it seems, characteristic of the times of oppression, when both poverty and prudence dictated that nothing of the smallest material value should be used to provoke greed and the desecration of shrines; and in 1964 such clay vessels were still kept at the lonelier sanctuaries, which could not even then be effectively guarded. There was also a small, doll-like figure of a boy–a pesarog-hanging in the sanc tuary. This had been put there in thanksgiving either for the birth of a boy, or for a son’s survival of some sickness or danger; for although the communal cult of Teštar Ized had declined, the yazad was still beloved by individuals, and on his yearly feast-day his shrine was well frequented.

blessed, was then cut in two, lengthwise, and one half was carried ceremonially to the temple of Shah Varahram Lzed, and the other half to that of Shah Alor Khara, so that there should be no invidiousness. Fruits or lurk were sent with both, and one haunch was removed at the greater fire-temple. The communal gathering on the fifth day also took place there. In Sharifabad five Afrinagan services were solemnized on that occasion, first one alone, and then two by two that is, two were recited simultaneously, one by the priest, the other by a lay elder. The congregation therefore said three sets of košti-prayers, one before the first service, the others before the two double ones. Thereafter there was a dis tribution of meat and lurk (but no bread), which was eaten communally in the temple.

See below, p. 181.

42 See further below, p. 206.

istiyor

86 SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES

When this shrine was rebuilt in the 1940s, the opportunity was taken to create a beautiful walled garden around it. There was already a big old elm growing there; and the villagers planted other elms and aspens to give shade, together with oleasters, sweet pome granates, and thickets of roses, with scented jonquils beneath them to flower in early spring. For more than a decade it was a place of delight, but then two misfortunes overtook it. The spring which watered the garden began to dry up, and the trees and plants to wither; and Moslem houses were built around it, where once there had been fields. Moslem hooligans ring-barked the great elm and killed it, and despite the high garden-wall the shrine was exposed to theft and desecration.

This shrine and that of Mihr Ized were the only two of ancient origin in Sharifabad. All that the villagers could say of either was that it was very, very old; and the likelihood is that both were established not long after the sacred fires were brought there, probably nearly a thousand years ago. Since the mid nineteenth century, however, individuals, free from the restraints which the presence of the priests must have imposed, have founded three other lesser sanctuaries, whose history is well known. The oldest of these is in a corner of the garden of Shah Teštar Ized, and the story which is told of its origin is as follows: over a hundred years earlier, before the abolition of the annual poll-tax on Zoroastrians, there lived a certain Bunyad, who was very poor and in debt. He did not dare to reap his few fields openly, fearing that his creditors would seize the scanty harvest and leave him with no means of paying the tax. He would then be faced with one of two choices—to become a Moslem or be beaten and tortured, perhaps to death. In the end he reaped his small crop by night, managed to thresh it unobserved, and again under cover of darkness took a single sack of grain to Ardekan to sell. As he was passing near the shrine of Teštar Ized a white-robed dervish appeared out of the night and begged for a handful of corn. As one poor man to another Bunyad gave it him. The dervish begged for a second, and again Bunyad let him have it. Then the stranger grew remorseful, and saying that he could not take them, since Bunyad was himself in want, he thrust both back into the sack and disappeared. Bunyad went on his way, but the sack seemed strangely heavy, and he wondered if the dervish had tricked him and put back stones; but when dawn came and he could look into the sack he found in it a double handful of jewels. He

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES realized then that the white-robed stranger must have been Sroš, the yazad who, under Ohrmazd, bas especial care for men. Bunyad sold the jewels, paid both the poll-tax and his creditors, and bought a large estate. Since the miracle had happened on Ruz Aštad of Mah Azar, he built a shrine to Aštad at the place where it had befallen; and this shrine was later enclosed in the garden of Teštar Ized. And whatever the truth of the story (Agha Rustam, who told it to me, said), not only was the shrine still standing, but the Anjoman still administered what remained of the generous bequests made in charity by Bunyad from his estate.

Aštad is much beloved, the hypostasis of justice and closely linked therefore with Mihr). She is a female yazad, nevertheless her shrine was known according to standard usage as that of Shah Ašto Ized.43 It was relatively large and dignified for the time when it was built, and had not been altered since. It consisted of a single low barrel-vaulted room, about twelve feet long. The door at one end was big for those dangerous days—a good five feet-but still one had to stoop to enter. At the further end there was a bench altar running across the width of the room, with a hollow in it to hold fire; and above this, and over the door, small holes were pierced through the roof to let the smoke escape; but when the door was closed the little shrine was quite dark, except for the light from fire or candle. It was looked after by the khadem of Shab Teštar Ized, and was especially visited on the morning of the feast of Sada, that is, on Ruz Aštad of Mah Azar, the day of the miracle.

Another little shrine of Sharifabad slowly acquired sanctity, instead of being built as a holy place. This used to be known as the Pir-e Cor Drakht, Shrine of the Four Trees’, although there had been no trees growing close to it within living memory. It too was a shrine in the fields, and used to be just a humble flat-roofed room built to give shelter to those working there; but gradually a mys terious reputation grew up around it, and miracles were said to have happened, and no one dared sleep there at night, for dread of a divine presence.44 Then Noshiravan-e Gushtasp, Agha Rustam’s father, initiated the custom of celebrating a gahambar-e toji there

43 There was a shrine in Kerman also to Shah Aštad Ized, see Sorushian, Farhang, 209.

# On such buildings in the fields, put up to give shelter on summer days and winter nights, see ‘Some Aspects of Farming’, 126 with Pl. X 2. In other Yazdi villages too these lonely little places sometimes acquired a supernatural aura, and had been made within living memory into shrines.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES in the late afternoon of the first day of the festival of Mihr Ized, and the little room came to be regarded as a shrine and was known as Shah Mihr Ized-e Sabrā’i, or ‘Mihr Ized in the Fields’. In the 1940s Agha Rustam rebuilt it at his own expense, and made of it a charm ing small shrine, completely circular (about fifteen feet in diameter), with a doned roof, and a little entry-passage for added security, with an inner and outer door. There was a recess for festive-day cooking in this passage, though on communal occasions hearths were made too in the field-lane outside.

So matters remained until the late 1950s, when a miracle befell old Shirin-i Set Hakemi, who was the guardian of the shrine. She told how one dawn, as she was lying awake in her bed, a noble-looking man appeared to her, long-moustached and with a mirror under his arm. He declared himself to be Shah Paridun, and said that he was going to his own home, and that she should follow him. She rose up and did so, and he walked before her to the shrine and went inside. She entered after him, and found the place empty but full of the sweetest fragrance. She made the miracle known, and the village as a whole accepted it (though some were sceptical). The shrine was rededicated accordingly, so that thereafter on entering it most worshippers uttered the invocation ‘Ya Shah Paridun!. Nevertheless, the gahambar-e toji on the first day of Mihragan still took place at this sanctuary, after which the whole congregation went from there to the old shrine of Mihr Ized within the village.

It is doubtful if in the days of the priests a shrine could have been made in Sharifabad to Shah Paridun, for he is not a yazad, and only his spirit or fravaši can give help to men, and his cult, although an ancient one, tends, as we have seen, to be confused with magical practices concerned with the paris, 45 The last-created of the Sharif abadi shrines had also acquired a dedication that would probably not have been approved by the priests of old. The shrine itself was built some thirty years previously, in response to a dream by Mundagar-e Rustam Abadian, Agha Rustam’s father-in-law; and for some time it was known simply as the Pir-e Mundagar, or Pir-e Mund, 46 a name which became corrupted into Pir-e Murād, the ‘Shrine of Hope’. It was the smallest of the village sanctuaries, a little domed room which one entered directly from the lane in which it stood, not far

45 See above, p. 63.

46 It was not uncommon for a little Pir* to be named in this way for the man who had founded it, nearly always (it seemed) as the result of a dream.

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES

89 from the shrine of Mihr Ized. It had a little low octagonal pillar altar at the further end, and this, unusually, was flat-topped, instead of having a hollow for fire. As the years went by the villagers, with their instinct for worship, sanctified the little room with their prayers; and at last someone asked why it was that, although they as Zoroastrians venerated Ohrmazd above all other beings, yet they had no shrine consecrated especially to him. The orthodox answer is presumably that the Creator has the whole of his creation for a shrine, and is worshipped everywhere in every religious rite, and so needs no particular man-made sanctuary. But the Sharifabadis, although such traditionalists, seemed tolerant of most genuine devotional impulses, and so this smallest and last of the village shrines came to be dedicated to Ohrmazd himself, and was commonly called the Pir-e Dāðvar Ormezd, the ‘Shrine of Ohrmazd the Creator’, though some rejected this dedication and still referred to it as the Pir-e Murad, Sharifabad had accordingly in the end five shrines within the village, as well as the two fire-temples, which brought its holy places to the auspicious number of seven.

In general it seems that the six great Amahraspands were felt, like the Creator himself, to need no artificial sanctuaries, each being worshipped through his own creation. The one exception was Vahman, lord of cattle. Io Mazra Kalantar, which in most respects was as orthodox as Sharifabad, there was a shrine set in the fields which was named for him as ‘Vomanrū’, and Yazd had one similarly dedicated to “Vāmiro’,47 that is, both these sanctuaries were devoted

PR:40.42

+7 This shrine was in the same lane as the old Bar-e Mihr-e Račune’i (or Bar-e Mihr-e Mas). It used to be simply an old čor-pesgami house, with the sanctuary on the east side of the pesgam-e mas—the usual small, dark, windowless room, with a slab-altar at the east end. The shrine was much resorted to by childless women, and above the altar and along the south wall, in 1964, there were votive offerings of beautifully made rag dolls, two placed in elaborate cradles. People with other wishes too came to the shrine, which had an especial three-day festival each year when it was thronged, largely by villagers. This took place on the days Hormazd, Vahman, and Urdibehišt of Mah Hordad. On the first day offerings were brought for sacrifice, occasionally a sheep or goat, but more often hens. These were sacrificed on Ruz Hormazd, since Ruz Vahman itself is a na-bur (non-killing’) day, on which no creature of Vahman may be slain, and no meat eaten, On that day meat from the sacrifice was prepared and some of it was taken ‘round the lanes’ to the old and sick, and on the third day there was feasting and rejoicing at the shrine itself. So popular had the cult become that a decade or two previously the three lesser pesgars were demolished and a large courtyard was made in their stead, to accommodate the throng of worshippers that gathered on this occasion. There were lesser assemblies on Ruz Vahman of each month, and then, as at the major occasion, a sopra was set out in the sanctuary, and the

SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES to the ‘Day Vahman’ (the second of every month), their names being contractions of ‘Vahman Rūz’. Kerman too had a shrine to Vahman, but this was more orthodoxly named the Pir-e Shah Vahman Amšāspand.48 The names of the other two shrines were linked, however, with a significant fact: the Iranis have six ‘beloved (azīz) days in each month, on which it is especially meritorious to do religious acts. These are, in order through the month, Vahman, Ādar, (Teštar)-Tīr, Mihr, Varahram, and Aštād. The reasons why these six days were especially favoured are not easy to determine in each case, but there seems, naturally enough, to be a link between them and the founding of sanctuaries. Thus Sharifabad had in the end shrines to four of the six yazads concerned (if the fire-temple is accounted a sanctuary of Varahram), and Kerman had shrines to five (lacking only one to Teštar), for there was actually an empty shrine there to Shah Adar Ized, the yazad of fire. 49 It is, moreover, striking that Bunyad chose to dedicate his shrine in Sharifabad not to Sroš, who performed the miracle which befell him, but to Aštad, on whose day it happened. The fact of there being ‘beloved days’ may therefore have come first, and have encouraged the making of shrines to Vahman and Adar, who by older usage would scarcely have been honoured in this way (though naturally the immediate prompting to do so came for both the Yazdi and the Mazra shrines in the usual form of a dream). That to create shrines for the six Amahraspands generally was not orthodox usage is suggested by the fact that none is recorded to Spendarmad, the special yazad of farmers and of women, whose five-day festival was almost as popular, even in Islamic times, as those of Mihr and Teštar-Tir.50 There is, however, a piece of debated evidence which, according to one inter pretation, suggests that the custom of founding sanctuaries for Vahman may be relatively old, and that is Strabo’s statement that in one of the Persian shrines in Asia Minor in his day there was a wooden statue to ‘Omanus*;5I but whether this name is really to be identified as that of Vahman is not certain.

Although the shrines of Sharifabad itself were very different in age and character, each received its share of devotion, which was guardian of the shrine, an old woman, told a folktale in ritual fashion (as described above, pp. 66–7), This tale had no connection with the Amahraspand Vabman, but once more had to do with the daughters of ‘Shah Pari’.

48 See Sorushian, Farhang, 210.

49 See ibid, 209. 50 See ‘On the calendar of Zoroastrian feasts’, 535-6. 51 XV. 3. 15.

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SACRED FIRES AND EMPTY SHRINES paid with a blend of high seriousness and gaiety; for when young people had said their prayers and made their offerings, one of them would often strike up on a tambourine and the others begin to sing or dance. The joyful noise could be considerable, with the throbbing instruments and a clapping of hands, in which older people too would join; but though it stopped if a grave elder appeared who wished to pray in peace, there was no feeling that the gaiety was in itself irreverent, or unwelcome to the divinity of the place. Indeed, I was once at one of the mountain shrines when young men were singing and dancing in the outer room, and a girl, for propriety’s sake, held a shawl across the doorway to the inner sanctuary while one of her companions danced gracefully in the narrow space beside the sacred rock itself.52 Those coming from another background could not always see this joyful activity as a part of worship, and some Parsi visitors tried to persuade the guardians of the shrines that it should not be allowed. So these conscientious men tried at times to check it; but Sharifabad was accustomed to worshipping in gladness, and these half-hearted efforts to create a uniformly solemn atmosphere at their holy places met with small success.

52 The dancer on this occasion was Piruza, Agha Rustam’s second daughter. Soon afterwards Agha Rustam himself came up to the shrine to pray, and all the young people at once fell silent and melted respectfully away.

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