आगमे विश्वासटिप्पन्यः

SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

The words of their ancient holy texts were a source of immense comfort and strength to the Zoroastrians, who believed unquestion ingly that these had all been directly revealed by God to their prophet. They had faith that by uttering verses from them they could procure divine aid and blessings, and it was usual to say a prayer before embarking on any enterprise, whether this was sowing the new season’s crops or setting off on a bus journey to Yazd. (The Ahunvar was most often recited.) Moreover, the power of the words, they held, could be increased by appropriate actions, and there were accordingly a number of individual rites which were regularly performed to obtain grace or help in this life, or to benefit the departed.

One of the most impressive of these sites, with a history going back at least to Parthian times,’ was that of exalting the fire’, ataš buzorg kardan, in Dari taš mas kartwun. In the past at least four priests took part in this, and sometimes eight or more; and Arbab Jamshid Sorushian recalled how beautiful the ceremony had seemed to him, solemnly enacted by white-clad mobeds in the hall of the Ataš Bahram of Yazd (it had never been performed during his own lifetime in Kerman). In Sharifabad the rite was necessarily reduced to a greater simplicity, but all its elements were faithfully preserved. Essentially, it is an ancient ritual performed to redeem such fire as has suffered contamination in this world, by purifying it and joining it to the purest fire of all, that which burns in a fire-temple. Since the theologians taught that all fires were essentially one, part of the life-force, as it were, of the world, to rescue even one small sullied flame was to contribute to the great struggle against the pollution of the good creation of Ohrmazd. Hence the rite of ’exalting the fire’ was highly meritorious and was often performed in the Yazdi

Cf. Vd. 8.81 f. (on which see ‘On the sacred fires of the Zoroastrians”, 65-6).

187

FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD area. Sometimes a whole village would unite to have it done on behalf of their dead (to compensate for any transgressions by them against fire while they lived). More usually it was performed at the behest of individuals, occasionally for their own welfare, but much more frequently for their dead. This was especially done during the

first year after a death.

As we have seen, the Yazdis usually chose to have this and other rites performed in one of the two ’tenfold’ or ‘beloved months, Azar or Urdibehišt, and it was enacted accordingly several times in Sharifabad during the No Ruz holidays of 1964, since these co incided in part with Azar Mah in the traditional calendar. The first time that I witnessed it was when it was carried out for Rustam-e Hormezdyar, who had died some six months earlier. Three days before the public ceremony was due, Rustam-e Rashid, the atašband, took the big silvery afrinagan of the fire-temple and a kerchief full of sweetmeats and lurk, and, forming paivand with another man, went with him to Ardekan to collect embers from nine fires belonging to Moslem traders, which necessarily suffered pollution. They visited a coppersmith, blacksmith, and locksmith, a baker, con fectioner, and a man who made sugar-loaves, a dyer, a turner, and a bath-attendant. To each they gave a handful of lurk and sweets, and received from each in return embers from his fire. (The transaction was too regularly carried out to evoke surprise or comment, even in unfriendly Ardekan.) They then carried the afrinagan to the Dastur’s home, and for three days his wife fed the fire with charcoal, and for three nights D. Khodadad solemnized a Vendidad over it, and for three mornings a Yaşna (although, single handed and hard-pressed as he was, he had of necessity to omit considerable portions of these long services). On the second day Rustam brought another afrinagan full of embers for a second performance of the rite; but this was kept apart and tended separately by Piruza Khanom, until the prayers over the first were finished, so that there should be no confusion between the two observances.

On the third morning, having finished the Yasna (dedicated to Sroš), D. Khodadad carried the afrinagan to the fire-temple, where the public ceremony was performed in the late afternoon, before a fairly large congregation. The door of the fire-sanctuary was open, and within the sanctuary itself D. Khodadad had set out nine square bricks a few inches apart, in a curved line leading from the threshold to the foot of the fire-altar, and on each was a neat bundle of clean188 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT corn-stalks, stripped of the outer sheath.2 The afrinagan with the now consecrated fire was just outside the door. D. Khodadad said the košti-prayers, and then summoned the dahmobed, who came to stand beside him and announced to the congregation, ‘The fire belongs to Rustam-e Hormezdyar, may God have mercy on him!* All the men and youths rose and said their košti-prayers while the Dastur recited the Khoršed-Mihr Niyayes. He then lowered his mouth-veil, and made paivand by means of a košti with the dah mobed, before lighting two straws at the fire in the afrinagan. Then, reciting the Ataš Niyayes, he lifted the bundle of corn-stalks from the first brick, and kindled it from these two burning straws (which he then pushed back into the afrinagan). Then he lifted the second bundle and lit it from the first, which he put back, still blazing, on its brick, and so on, steadily, all along the line, until the ninth bundle was alight. Then he dropped the košti (the ninefold filtering, as it were, of the already consecrated fire being thus complete), and placed the ninth bundle of corn-stalks, faring brightly, on a big bundle of kindling wood at the foot of the fire-altar; and when this was well alight, he lifted it and placed it carefully on the sacred fire itself. The fire-altar was invisible to most of the congregation, but at this point the flames from the burning wood leapt high and illuminated the whole sanctuary, so that the doorway became filled with bright ness. The Dastur gathered the flickering remains of all the com bundles on to the ninth brick, so that they made a separate little fire, which quickly burnt out, at the foot of the altar; and then, standing facing the sacred fire, he recited the Ardvahišt Yašt. Then he came to the sanctuary-door, took up the afrinagan, and carried it to the sacred fire. With the metal bara he smoothed the ash at the very edge of the fire-bowl, and covering the bara with ash from the afrinagan three times, put this ash at three places round the rim of the bowl, so that ash tested on ash, in a form of paivand. Then he carefully set down the afrinagan on the ground so that its rim touched the stone at the base of the fire-altar.4

Apother time when I was present he put ash in four places round the bowl. When I questioned him about this, he said that the amount of ash thus Used was ritually unimportant, and that the vital paivand was that of the afrinagan with the stone.

-OP

.—

FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

189 All this while the members of the congregation had themselves been reciting Avesta in a steady continuous murmur, essentially the familiar Khoršed-Mihr and Ataš Niyayeš, amplified by the Ard vahist Yašt or other prayers. Many recited by heart, but most of the younger people on entering took a Khorda Avesta (in Persian script) from a bookcase, and read some prayers from this. When D. Khodadad came out of the fire-sanctuary he went into the main pesgam to solemnize a gahambar-service, while the atašband closed the sanctuary door. After the service, lurk was distributed in the usual way. (When the ceremony of ’exalting the fire’ was performed in Yazd, some of the wealthier families also gave money to the poor, but this was not part of village usage.)

The next performance of the rite that April was for one Ferangis, also six months dead, but the third was asked for by the khadem of Banu-Pars for his mother, who had died some fifteen years earlier, and the fourth was for Rustam-e Khodabakhsh, dead twenty-four years. His widow, who was present at the service with her daughter and granddaughter, had had the rite performed for him once pre viously. There was an especially large congregation that afternoon, since it was a Friday, the national day of rest. When the service was over and the others were leaving, the widow warmly pressed Piruza Belivani and me to stay behind with the family and eat the ‘Avesta food (čom-e Avestai), that is, the varderin and what had been cooked to make boy-o-brang. (The varderin included some of the first mulberries of the year, and there were pink rose-petals scattered over it.) The fifth ataš buzorg kardan of the month was again for a villager who had died within the year. In May the rite was asked for in Mazras, and then Rustam the atašband collected the embers of nine fires as usual in Ardekan, using a small afrinagan; and after the three days’ consecration of the fire, D. Khodadad put this small vessel in one of the panniers on his bicycle, and a quantity of charcoal in the other, and cycled across the desert, pausing to tend the fire on the way. It took about two hours, once he had reached Mazras, to gather the congregation there, and during this time he prayed by the fire and cherished it. On the rare occasions when a Hasanabadi family wanted the rite to be performed,

190 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT they used to come to Sharifabad, having no fire-temple of their own.

The site of ab-zöhr the ‘libation to water’ (called in Dari ow-zūr, or, with metathesis, ow-rūz) was also much performed, like that of ataš buzorg kardan, in the two ‘beloved’ months, for similar reasons; and, since it was less costly, there were few families in Sharifabad which did not have it celebrated at least twice a year. The libation itself (the zohr) was provided by the laity in the following way: a bowl, usually one inscribed and kept for ritual use, was filled with milk directly from the cow, a handful of oleaster fruits was added, and rose-petals or marjoram leaves were sprinkled on the surface, and then the bowl was taken to the Dastur.6 The first time that I saw him make the libation was on an April day in Mazra Kalantar, at the little stream which flowed at carefully regulated intervals through the main lane of that drought-stricken village. The zohr had been brought to him in a handsome copper-plated bowl, with a deep copper-plated spoon, both inscribed, and there were yellow rose-petals floating on the milk. He seated himself cross-legged on the bank of the lower pool, bowl in his left hand, spoon in his right, and dipped out three spoonfuls, one after the other, and poured them into the water. Then he began to recite the Abän Niyāyes and, miraculously it seemed, the still water instantly started to flow (although it must have been simply that, by a happy chance, it was at just that moment that Isfandiar, who controlled the water, pulled up the big stone stopper in the upper pool). Having finished the Aban Niyayes, he went on quietly reciting other familiar texts (pre cisely which, he said, was immaterial, though naturally there must be no invocation of fire in the presence of water, any more than of water in the presence of fire); and at intervals, while he recited, he poured single spoonfuls of the zohr into the water. The family for whom he was performing the site sat, with some others, on the bank above him, watching; and around him the ordinary life of the village went on. Two men were slowly roping up an immense bundle of raw cotton, and beside them the camel which was to carry it was lying munching straw, its halter-bells jingling as it ate; a black calf, roving about, tried from time to time to snatch a mouthful of the

FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

191 cotton, and was shouted at lustily by the men when it did so. A patient white dog lay watching the Dastur and twitching off fies, and two women were washing clothes downstream. The recital took about half an hour; and finally the Dastur poured what re mained of the libation directly from the bowl, in three pourings, into the water. He then immersed bowl and spoon in the stream, scoured both thoroughly with sand from the bank, and rinsed them again so that every drop of the consecrated liquid was carried away by the running water.

In Sharifabad D. Khodadad regularly made the offering, not in still privacy at the stream running beneath the Dastur’s House, but at the communal watering-place where all the women went to wash dishes, steep straw, water their animals, and exchange the daily news; but he sat, naturally, at the point where the stream emerged from its under ground channel, so that all this activity went on below him. In Hasanabad each house had its own water-supply; and there I watched him later that month in the garden of Shiriazaban, performing the rite for her late husband in solitude, she being busy preparing a meal for him indoors. The silvery libation-bowl was inscribed with her hus band’s name, and he carried it to a stream that flowed through the garden, and seated himself by a big rose-bush in iower.? The stream ran there through a bricked channel, so he brought wood-ash from the hearth-fire for scouring the bowl and spoon at the end of the rite.

It was when the villagers wanted the site performed for the dead. that they entrusted it to the Dastur, so that it should be ritually correct and fully effective; but during the ‘beloved’ months, girls used to do it more simply for the living members of the family, carrying the libation to every stream in the village, and pouring a little of it into each while reciting some piece of familiar Avestan. The rite was naturally obligatory for anyone who had actually pol luted water; and Agha Rustam recalled two instances when Sharif abadi Moslems asked the Dastur to perform it for them after death, at the time when their bodies would be washed in running water to Zoroastrians the grossest pollution of that pure creation.

192 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT

A rite on behalf of the dead which seemed to have no element of atonement in it, but was simply to offer comfort, was the Yašt-e daur-e dakhma, also called Yašt-e bar-e dāzgāh ‘The act of worship at the dakhma’ (termed alternatively the dădgāh/dăzgâh, because it was the appointed place for the dead). This was performed at will by individual families, or groups of families, often during the first month after a death, or during the ‘beloved’ months of the first year. It was solemnized, ideally, throughout the hours of darkness, and probably evolved as an elaboration of the practice of keeping a fire or lamp always burning outside a dakhma, in order to comfort the souls whose bodies had been carried there; and this in tum was almost certainly a prolongation of a usage whereby fire was lit outside the tower during the three nights after a death, when the soul was held to linger upon earth. When there was a larger Zoro astrian population, funeral must have followed close on funeral, and so it would have been natural to institute an ever-burning fire to meet this need. This development must have taken place well before the ninth century, since the custom is common to the Iranis and Parsis.

In 1964 Sharifabad had two funerary towers standing on rising ground in the desert just to the south of the village. One had been built in 1863 with the energetic help of the Parsi agent, Manekji Limji Hataria, whose memory was still green in Sharifabad.To This replaced an old earth-walled one on the northern side of the village, which was afterwards razed by Moslems. The American traveller Williams Jackson, passing that way in 1903, heard tell both of this old earthen tower and of Manekji’s dakhma;li but he did not see either, because then the Yazd-Isfahan road passed along the other side of the plain, and the places chosen by the Sharifabadis for their funerary towers were utterly lonely and remote. Manekji’s tower, a wide low one, without outside steps, continued in use for a hundred years, which, according to tradition, is as long as is proper, for otherwise the pollution in that one place will become too great.

See below, p. 195. This usage is referred to in the Rivayats, but there is no mention there of the rite of Yašte daur-e dakhma, which appears to be a relatively recent development (i.e. since the seventeenth century). There is no similar observance among the Parsis.

“I See his Persia Past and Present, 403-4. He also heard tell then of other disused dakhnas in that region whose sites were marked by ‘mounds of earth which are still pointed out by aged Parsis of Sharifabad’.

FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

193 So, under the inspiration largely of Agha Rustam, and with con tributions of money from individual Sharifabadis and the village Anjoman, and some help also from the Parsis, a new dakhma was built beside Manekji’s and was brought into use in 1963. The village was proud of the fact that this was erected with the full elaborate rites prescribed in the Rivayats, 12 A number of Yazdi priests colla borated, and there was a large attendance of Zoroastrians from far and near for the final consecration. It seems fitting that it should be Sharifabad, that bastion of the old faith, which had the piety and communal spirit to build, with great labour and devotion, what circumstances suggest will be the last dakhma ever to be raised within Iran,

Manekji’s dakhma was then enclosed by a circular blank wall to discourage Moslem violation. The new tower was higher, and set on a round stone base with steeply sloping sides, designed to prevent a recent method of climbing in (practised during the last years of the old dakhma), which was to drive a lorry close up to the wall and scramble in from its roof. There were solid steps leading up to the door, which was a massive metal one with double locks, imported from Bombay. For a whole year this had resisted persistent attempts by hooligans to break it down, but twice while I was in the village their efforts jammed the locks. In the first case a child’s body had to be lowered over the wall into the old dakhma, in the second one the salars managed to get the door open, with the help of an Ardekani. locksmith, just in time to carry the bier inside before dark. Withio, the tower was designed according to the evolved Parsi plan,13 and its central well went down to some six feet below the level of the surrounding desert, being filled at the bottom first with fine and then with coarse sand. Without, the dakhma was whitewashed, so that it stood out, proud and stark, against the brown of the desert; and since the Yazd-Isfahan highway now runs along the northern side of the plain, the tower was conspicuous to travellers, and even the kindly Maybod bus-conductor used to point it out to strangers as a sight of morbid interest. The Anjoman of Yazd, less sturdy of spirit than the Sharifabadis, offered the latter enough sand-brown paint

12 See Riv., Unvala, i. 99-100; Dhabhar, 102–3; and in even more detail Modi, CC, 231-8.

13 On the evolution of the Parsi dakhmas see ‘An old village dakhma of Iran, 3-5. To judge from the size of the enclosing wall, Manekji’s dakhma at Sharifabad was much like the one which he saw erected at Qanat-ghesan near Kerman, see art. cit. 7-8.

194 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT to camouflage it, but the villagers replied, politely but firmly, that they liked it white and saw no reason to disguise it. To them the rite of exposure was not only simple and practical; they preferred to think of the body swiftly reduced to bare bones, which then lay in sunlight and moonlight, and were blown upon by winds, rather than being put to putrefy in a coffin or directly in the ground, Moslem-fashion, thus being thrust into darkness and corrupting the good earth.

The doors of both dakhmas, in orthodox fashion, faced east, where the sun rises to draw the soul up to heaven; and about thirty paces in front of each was a sangok, or offertory table. This was a low platform made of stones, with a recess, open on the side further from the dakhma, in which fire could be kindled. 14 There was a hole on the other side, about a foot above ground, so that the light of the fire could reach the tower. One of the tracks from Sharifabad to Mazrat led past the dakhmas, and whenever I went that way with D. Khodadad he used to put some small offering, of fruit or herbs, On each of the sangoks, and say his košti-prayers—an act of family piety, for his father and uncle had been carried to the old dakhma, his brother to the new one. On the further side of the sangoks was a low complex of buildings, which included a fine open pesgam facing the towers, the ganza-laš or room for the ever-burning fire, kitchens, and a yard for donkeys. (In the following pages, for clarity’s sake, this range of buildings will be referred to as the dadgah, to distinguish it from the dakhma itself.) The ganza-taš was small and inconspicuous, with a tiny dome, and it was entered by a padlocked metal door no bigger than that of a safe. The fire was cared for by Paridun Rashidi, the dakhmaban (Dari dămavun) or guardian of the dakhma. He was a tall man, and he had to drop flat and twist through this door head-first, returning feet first. Formerly the fire burnt in a mud-walled enclosure in a corner of the little room, but now it was set in a stone basin on a mud-brick pillar. This too was in a corner, but nevertheless hooligans would try to get at it, prodding about with a long pole through the small roof-hole, knocking over anything stored in the room and breaking the glass which used to be set in the two tiny openings in the wall facing the dakhma. Paridun visited the dadgah every evening, just before sunset, to tend the fire

14 The sangok in front of Manekji’s dakhma was rectangular (about 7 x 4 feet) and made of largish stones surfaced with smooth clay. The one before the new dakhma was round (about 7 feet in diameter), of smaller stones.

FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

195 (in the same manner that the sacred fire was tended in the temple), and to light an oil-lamp, which stayed alight for several hours; and during the three days after a funeral he remained there all night, to keep the fire burning brightly and the lamp lit through the hours of darkness.

It was the custom in Sharifabad that once every seven years notice was given to all the people in the parish, and the families of those who had died within that period (and others if they wished) gathered at the dadgah soon after sunrise on the appointed day. The Dastur recited the Ahunavad Gah, seated in the main pesgam, with the salars sitting on the other side, but not directly opposite him (so as not to approach their impurity too closely to his purity). Then they made paivand, took the baj of Sroš, went to the dakhma and entered it each carrying a blisk-a long-handled metal implement like a bara. With the blisks they gathered together the sun-bleached bones and pushed them gently into the central well (the srāda), where they would crumble in time to dust. They sprinkled pajow over them and over the stone floor of the dakhma, and withdrew, leaving all in order for another seven years. The Dastur continued to recite Avesta while they accomplished this task, seated before a fire near the sangok, and fixing his eyes alternately on it and on the door of the dakhma; and the women in the meantime made boy-o-brang. The whole ritual took about two hours; and again that same day the Dastur returned to recite Avesta for about two hours around sunset

—the time when the fravašis chiefly visit the earth.

The Yašt-e daur-e dakhma, as solemnized in Sharifabad, seemed to have developed through a blend of this septennial observance with the regular one of keeping fire burning brightly to solace and help the newly dead. A group of Sharifabadi families joined together to have the ceremony performed late in April in 1964,15 and about an hour before sunset on the appointed day I cycled out with D. Khodadad to the dakhma. On the way we passed three men on foot, carrying acetylene lamps, and a colourful group of women were

1$ This was after Hiromba, and the ‘beloved’ month of Azar had already given way to Dai Mah according to the traditional calendar; but it had been impossible to get additional priests to come out earlier from Yazd, so busy were they there with pious observances of the “tenfoid month’ for their own parishioners. However, by one of those inconsistencies available to them, the Sharifabadis made the best of things by choosing for their rite Vahman Ruz of Dai Mah, which corresponded to Azar Ruz of Urdibehišt Mah according to the reformed calendar-a day which is especially holy, since it brings together the two guard ians of fire, Urdibebišt Mah is, moreover, the other beloved’ month of the year.

196 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT already busy at the dadgah. Two of the Yazdi priests–D. Gushtasp-e Adargushnasp and D. Sorush, the hušt-mobed of Taft—were there already, having come by bus and walked across the short stretch of desert from the highway. They were dressed like ordinary towns men, in dark-coloured clothes and trilby hats, for no priest in Yazd or Kerman was willing to court trouble by going about in white; but they changed at the dadgah into more appropriate garmeats. Paridun was busy bringing water from the nearest tank, but after three or four journeys he sprang on his big donkey and galloped off bareback to meet his wife Murvarid and Sarvar, who were coming burdened with utensils and food. In the end twenty-four Sharifabadis were gathered at the dadgab—twelve men and twelve women, but for once no small boys, since this rite was restricted to adults (un less, exceptionally, a girl came to represent her family when no one else could so so). Five families, recently bereaved, had given money for the ceremony, and the others, less directly concerned, contributed food and fuel.

While the light lasted, there was tea and talk. Paridun had placed fire in both the sangoks, carrying out embers from the dadgah kitchen, and offerings were already scattered over both—fruits, herbs, and rose-petals. As the sun began to sink, one of the women sprinkled white lime over the pesgam floor and on the sand in front of it, in welcome to the spirits; and a big afrinagan full of glowing fire was set on the ground about half-way between the pesgam and the sangoks. D. Khodadad produced a brown woody piece of bud-e nakošt6 and placed it, with camphor, on this fire; and then he and all the other men gathered outside the ganza-taš, facing the sun as it weat down behind the old dakhma, and said their košti-prayers, with the Khorshed-Mihr Niyayeš. Then after a pause, when the sun had vanished, they said the prayers of the first night-watch, with Sroš Yašt sar-e šab, and a patēt or confession on bebalf of the departed. The darkness quickly deepened, but an acetylene lamp had been put near the afrinagan, and its strong light just reached the two dakhmas. It showed too that by an odd trick of a shifting breeze the smoke and incense from the afrinagan was being wafted steadily now towards one dakhma, now towards the other, as if being deli berately bestowed by the Wind Yazad upon them both impartially.

The three priests meanwhile had seated themselves cross-legged in a row on a carpet in the pesgam, with food offerings before them

16 See above, p. 149.

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197 to be blessed. By D. Khodadad’s right knee was a small square of white cotton and on it were five small stones, carefully washed, one for each of the five souls for whom, specifically, the rite was to be performed, and whose names would be uttered repeatedly during the course of the night. At first each of the priests recited what Avesta he pleased, for about an hour and a half (during which time Agha Rustam arrived, on his moped). Then there was a pause for supper, the priests changing back into their travelling clothes to eat. It was a ruz-e na-bur by the traditional calendar, when no meat could be eatea,” so the food was sirog, fresh bread, and vegetable dishes. The men ate in a second pesgam, the women in the kitchen or in the open, on the still warm sands. Then began the most serious, concentrated part of the night’s observances. Paridun lit a fire on the sand close to the afrinagan, and this was kept burning through the rest of the night (some biggish logs of wood being used, brought like everything else on donkey-back). The three priests, meanwhile, left the baj of their silent meal, and made new the košti’. They then donded their white clothes again, and, having taken their places once more, began reciting the Ahunavad Gah. Following the usual Zoroastrian custom, though they began together and would end together, they did not recite in unison, so that unless one concentra ted on one voice it was impossible to follow the words; but the effect produced by the three voices, different in pitch and tone, blending together, was dignified and impressive. The blind Palamarz. was one of those present, and he also recited, sitting in a corner opposite the priests. (His young and much-loved wife had died that winter in childbirth, and her soul was one of the five for whom the ceremony was being performed.) Some of the other men slept; but the women were busy cooking sir-0-sedow in a big pan over the fire in the open, so that the boy-o-brang would carry, with the light of the fire, to the dakhmas. (Each had brought her own small contribution of pure oil, vinegar, and other ingredients.) When the pungent brew was sizzling hot, it was poured into a copper bowl and carried before the priests to become consecrated; and from time to time during the recitation D. Khodadad cut up some of the varderin on the carpet to release its fragrance also.

The moon rose through some small clouds, the light wind weat on blowing the smoke towards the dakhmas, and the night grew colder. Manekji’s dakhma, behind its enclosing wall, was dark and

| 17 Cf. above, p. 89 2. 47.198 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT low, but the new white one caught the moonlight and stood out dramatically against the dunes and dark hollows of the desert. The sonorous Avestan continued until eleven o’clock, and then there was a two-hour pause, to allow for the changing of the watch at midnight, when the world passed under the protection of Sroš. The women served tea, and D. Sorush borrowed from Sarvar her husband’s camelteer’s coat of thick felt, 18 and warm in it went to sleep, while the other two priests talked a little with us, and dozed, and woke again. At one o’clock they began to recite once more, this time each the Avesta of his choice, and Agha Rustam recited with them for over an hour. Most of the rest of the company slept from time to time, but there were always two or three women by the fire, tending it, or cooking food which they then brought to the pesgam.

The moon shone very brightly during the latter part of the night, and then yielded to a lovely dawn, apricot for a brief few minutes and then pale yellow behind the mountains. The men all gathered in the main pesgam, where the tired priests were still reciting, the women having prepared sir-o-sedow afresh. Suddenly, tiny in the distance, two lonely white figures appeared on the track leading from the village, and came steadily on, shoulder to shoulder. They were the salars, coming to complete the rite. While they were approaching, a woman carried a big glass bottle, full of the sir-o-sedow that had been consecrated by the night’s prayers, to three paces beyond the sangok of the new dakhma, and set it on the ground. Then she returned and took the five stones in their white cloth, which D. Khodadad had knotted with seven knots (for the seven great Amah raspands), and put that too beside the bottle. When the salars finally drew near, they swung off the track and went to the new dakhma without approaching the pesgam or in any way acknowledging those gathered there. The sun had not yet risen, and they sat on the dakhma steps, facing east, and waited motionless for it to appear. They showed strikingly white even against the white tower, for not only were all their garments white, but they wore white headgear and white gloves as well, all of coarse homespun cotton. As soon as the sun’s rays touched the dakhma they rose and said their košti prayers. Then, as the sunlight reached the steps, they came down to gether and advanced to fetch the glass bottle and the cloth with the stones. On reaching them they made paivand with a košti, picked

18 For a photograph of her brother-in-law Jehangir wearing this heavy coat, with closed sleeves for additional warmth, see ‘Some aspects of farming’, Pl. XI.5.

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199 them up, returned to unlock the iron door, and disappeared into the dakhma. There, so Piruza the Dastur’s wife told me, they would sprinkle the sir-o-sedow first in one semicircle, sun-wise, from the door, and then, returning on their tracks, in another semicircle, withershins. Never must they make a complete, unbroken circle of the tower. Then they would untie the seven-knotted cloth, and scatter the consecrated stones on the thus purified surface of the tower. These actions took some ten minutes, during which time the priests once more recited patets, and the laity thought of their own dead, and prayed aloud for their salvation, and for all souls. Then the salars emerged, silent as before (for they were with baj), broke the empty bottle on the dakhma steps, left the cloth there, and relocked the heavy door, Then, still without look or gesture for the company, they returned side by side as they had come, their retreating figures visible all the way to the edge of the fields, white against the grey brown desert. As we watched them go, one elderly man broke down and wept for his wife, who had died that spring, leaving him desolate and alone.

Comfort came with the warmth of sunshine and food. First tea was drunk, and then the men ate breakfast in the pesgam and the women round the fire-a meal like the supper of the night before, of consecrated dishes. Big portions of everything, with great piles of bread and sirog, were put aside for the salars, to be taken to their houses. The two Yazdi priests then left, striking across the desert to the highway, and most of the men set off for the village and their day’s work, leaving Paridun and two others with the women, to sort and clean and sweep, and load everything on the donkeys. While they worked, a pied wagtail came dipping out of the desert, and alighted confidingly among the offerings on the old sangok.

D. Khodadad lingered a little, to rest, and then we set off together to cycle back to the village. On the way he spoke about the rite, which he thought had been improperly modified by the women through the use of sir-o-sedow. Properly, he maintained, it was puri fying pajow which should be taken with the stones into the dakhma, and nothing else. He added that sometimes when a villager died in Bombay, or was buried in the Zoroastrian cemetery in Tehran, an absolutely “pure’ sheet of white cotton, like a shroud, was put for him in the tower during the performance of this rite, to give his soul a physical link with the place where the bones of his forefathers lay, and where rites would be carried out for it down the years.

200 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT

The rite of Yašt-e daur-e dakhma was performed in the 1960s in all the older Zoroastrian villages. In Qasimabad, for instance, which carried its dead to the dakhma of Yazd, high on a hill, the villagers gathered in their own pavilion at the hill’s foot, and kept a fire burning through the night between it and the dakhma, while priests recited Avesta; but no one approached the dakhma, nor were salars employed to enter it. Despite the greater complexities of the Sharifabadi version of the rite, the essentials there too seemed to be the light of the fire reaching the dakhma throughout the hours of darkness, and the recitation of holy words; and it is easy to see how these basic observances could have evolved into the present rite under the influence of usages at the septennial cleansing of the dakhma. The Sharifabadi rituals were well-established, however. Formerly, Agha Rustam said, when there were many priests, some times six would be asked to come, and they would pray alternately in groups of three; and if the family means suficed, the rite would be repeated on a second, and if possible a third night during the month after death. When this was in winter (when the cold in the desert is piercing), priests and the laity would return to the village during the two hours pause around midnight, instead of resting then at the dadgah.

The next time that I went to the dakhma for a religious rite was in June, for the communal service called by the villagers the ‘Dadgah-e Tir-Mah’ (by the Tehranis the ‘Purse-ye Tir Mab’), which seemed to be a more recent elaboration of an old observance. Comparison with Parsi usage suggests that the Zoroastrians early evolved the practice of going once a year to their dakhmas and there holding services for the dead. The Parsis did this on Farvardin Ruz of Farvardin Mah, the name-day feast of the fravašis, 19 and there is evidence to suggest that this was the old usage, at least in the eastern parts of Iran.20 The Iranis perhaps did it at one time on Farvardin Ruz of Spendarmad Mah, the last (instead of the first) month of the Zoro astrian calendar, a day known to them as Forudög, the ‘Little fravaši’

19 See Seervai and Patel, ‘Gujarāt Pārsis”, 216.

20 This evidence lies in the fact that the Parsis went again to the dakhmas on Ruz Farvardin of Azar Mah, a usage which evidently developed during the period when the religious No Ruz was in Azar Mah, i.e. between c. A.D. 507 and 1006 (see ‘On the calendar…’, 528–35). So in eastern Iran at least (whose usages the Parsis seem in general to follow this communal rite belonged, it seems, to Farvardin Ruz of the first month of the religious year (originally Farvardin Mah itself).

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FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD festival. 21 If this were so, then they later transferred the usage to the religious No Ruz, 1 Farvardin. This perhaps came about because that day, although traditionally so great, in fact lacked observances, having lost its secular ones to the spring feast, and its religious ones to the ‘Greater No Ruz’, on 6 Farvardin;22 and there were, more over, special reasons for associating it with the fravašis.23

So the Iranis went to the dakhma on Ruz Hormazd of Mah Farvardin; and probably some time after A.D. 1006 they established a second day for this observance, namely Ruz Hormazd of the preceding month, Mah Ispandarmad. This was the first day of the festival known to them as Jašn-e Sven or Sven-e mas, that is, the five-day feast of Spendarmad, yazad of the earth. Hers was the farmers’ festival, and greatly beloved in the rural Zoroastrian com munities, and it became extended, at the calendar-change of A.D. 1006, to a ten-day festival, for the same reasons that Farvardigan or All Souls had been so extended at the third-century reform.24 So, just as Farvardigan became divided into two pentads, Panji-mas and Panji-kasog,25 so too there came to be a Sven-e mas and Sven-e kasog; and perhaps it was partly because of this parallelism that the custom developed of going to the dakhmas at this earlier festival also. There may too have been a contributory reason in Spendar mad’s association with the earth, for the Yazdis held that the ‘Dadgah-e Sven’ was for those who had died violent and sudden deaths and had not been carried to the dakhmas—for all those, they said, who had been slaughtered in the Arab invasion, or who had died in cruel persecutions since, or had perished as wayfarers, or been lost in the desert, Their bodies would have lain on or in the good earth, so there was especial need for rites on their behalf in the month devoted to Spendarmad, the earth’s guardian.

By the 1960s these memorial rites had come to overshadow the distinctive observances of the feast as a farmers’ festival, the ancient Jašn-e barzīgarān. By the traditional calendar the Jašn-e Sven had come to fall late in June, and so (with the early Yazdi ripening of crops) it could be celebrated as a harvest festival. In the reformed calendar it had been restored to what was evidently its rightful place

–

21 See further below, pp. 230 ff.

22 Now called Havzorū, see below, p. 229. On the shifting of the dakhma observance from I Farvardin by the reformists, see p. 227 N. 19.

23 For the prolongation of the All Souls’ Feast until Ruz Aban of Mah Farvardin see below, p. 235.

24 See ‘On the calendar …, 535-6.

25 See below, pp. 212-13 ff.

202 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT at the beginning of February, when the worst of winter was over, the sheep were lambing, and the trees coming into leaf, so those who used this calendar kept it as a celebration of the beginning of the farming year. Those elderly people who remembered celebrating it in their youth spoke of it as a very happy festival, but by then lasting effectively only a single day, ‘Ruz Sfandarmaz of Sven Mah’, that is, the fifth and last day of Sven-e mas, and the name-day feast of the yazad. That was kept as a general holiday by the villagers, and variously celebrated. I could find no clear memories of it in Sharif abad itself, but old people in the Yazdi villages spoke of each house hold cooking mutton broth, or wheat pottage, and carrying the cauldrons to the fire-temple, and there, after a brief service, eating all together, in merry mood, and in Kerman a century earlier this had been the day for kharafstar-kušī, when the Zoroastrians went out into field and plain, and slew venomous insects, snakes, scorpions, and the like, which crawled or crept on the good earth, and harmed men, animals, and crops.26

This latter observance would clearly have been easier to carry out at a June than a February feast; and probably it was the confusions attendant on the introduction of the reformed calendar which led to the final fading away of the farmers’ festival, which then yielded wholly to the funerary observance. Yet even the Yazdis, after reverting to the traditional calendar, continued to keep the ‘Dadgah-e Sven’ according to the reformed one, with unhappy consequences that in 1964 it coincided with the fifth and greatest day of Mihragan by the old reckoning. So villages such as Sharifabad and Mazras, which still kept Mihr’s feast with full rites, went to the dakhmas instead on the day before that festival began.

Since all things in Zoroastrianism should be done in threes, if possible, the reformers instituted a third annual visit to the dakhmas on Ruz Hormazd of Mah Tir, and this, being a new observance, was also kept everywhere according to the reformed calendar, in, mid-June. Nevertheless, it in its turn succeeded in absorbing or

16 Information verbally from Arbab Jamshid Sorushian, see Boyce, History, i. 299 n. 26. In his Farhang, 104, Arbab Jamshid identifies Sven-e mas with the Dadgah-e Sven (on Ruz Hormazd), and describes Sven-e kasog as having been in the past a feast for women (cf. Biruni, Chronology, ed. Sachau, 229). Spendar mad, guardian of mother earth, and herself the only female yazad among the great Amahraspands, is traditionally the guardian also of women, but none of the Yazdis whom I questioned knew of any particular association of the Jaśn-e Sven with women, and by them as by the Parsis (see, e.g., Modi, CC, 435) it was kept simply as a farming festival.

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203 putting an end to most of the charming observances with which the ancient festival of Tiragan used to be celebrated later that month (on Ruz Tir, the thirteenth). Presumably these observances, like those of the farmers’ festival, would soon have faded away in any case under the pressures of modern living, which make it easier to maintain instead the repetitive rites of remembrance; but un doubtedly these developments of the twentieth century have helped to reduce the diversity and delights of the old devotional year,

Since the practice of going to the dakhma on the first day of Farvardin was long established, Sharifabad and its two neighbours had a firm pattern of observance for this, which they merely ex tended to the two other days. For over a hundred years all three villages had carried their dead to the same place, which though within sight from the edge of the Sharifabadi fields, was a three hour ride on donkey-back from Mazra, and almost as far from Hasanabad. Moreover, during all that period i Farvardin had fallen in late summer, a time of blazing heat. So the customs of all three visits to the dakhma were based on the facts of relative distances and remorseless sunshine. There was no shade near the dakhma, except for what little was cast by the buildings there, and no water near at hand (for the Iranis strictly followed the prescriptions of the Vendi dad, that the dead should be exposed in barren places, far from fertile earth, water, or growing things). So it was prudent for the villagers not to go there all at once. Accordingly, those from Mazras and Hasanabad set out soon after dawn and travelled in the cool of the day, reaching the dakhma before the sun was high. In Sharifabad, however, the only persons who left so early were Pardun Rashidi and his three helpers. For days before, Paridun’s wife Murvarid had been busy taking out of store and washing all the jars and pitchers, pans and other vessels which belonged to the dadgah, mostly through pious bequests (for nothing could be kept there, because of pilferers); and Paridun himself had swept the pesgams and kitchens of the dadgah free from their accumulation of wind-blown sand. After sunrise on Ruz Hormazd he loaded up his donkey, tied a big tin water-urn on his own back, and set off for the dakhma. His helpers soon arrived one after another at his door, and loaded up in their turn. Bahram-e Škundari also had a donkey, a wise little animal which, as soon as the last pitchers were tied on its back, turned briskly round and set off for the dakhma ahead of its master. Rustam-e Tebrani, one of Paridun’s brothers, had a thickset black

204

SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT cow, which took a slightly lighter burden, and a brother-in-law, Jamshid Khosrowi, followed with a third donkey. They would be busy most of the day carrying water-drinking-water from a tank near the edge of the fields, and water for other purposes from a ganat-stream of slightly brackish water nearer the dakhma.

Meanwhile the other Sharifabadis went to the Dastur early in the morning with the names of their dead whom they wished to be remembered, either individually at separate gahambar-services, or in the list of names that would be recited at the final gahambar for all souls (hamo urun). D. Khodadad, having gathered these names together, left for the dakhma soon after nine, where he found those from Mazra’ and Hasanabad already well advanced in their preparations for him to celebrate their services. In the meantime the Sharifabadis made all the preparations which they could at their own homes. These were for the food to be blessed at the services and eaten thereafter in assembly. Women from seven related families met at the Belivani house that morning for this purpose. Each brought a contribution of flour, a little rice, eggs, tomatoes, potatoes, and onions, and ‘pure sesame-seed oil, as well as some firewood. The flour was sieved on to a big cloth, the eggs went into a little basket, and the potatoes and onions were peeled and wrapped in damp cloths inside pots and pans. Then, soon after midday, half the flour was mixed into a dough (but without leaven, which would be added later), and this dough too was put into a big pan. The rest of the flour would be given to the dakhmaban and his helpers, in recognition of their labours. All the rest of what had been brought was then loaded on the Belivani cow and the three or four of the women set off for the dakhma, braving the blazing heat of early afternoon, since the way was short.

On i Farvardin I was allowed to share in these preparations at home; but for the earlier ‘Dadgah-e Tir Mah’ I set out about seven o’clock to walk with Gushtasp and his aunt Murvarid to the dakhma, where Murvarid, as the dakhmaban’s wife, had much to do. The June sunshine was already hot, but was tempered by a north wind, and it was pleasant to go on foot through the fields, where patches of lucerne were in lovely blue flower between stretches of ripening wheat, and the green cotton-bushes were just breaking here and there into primrose-yellow blossom, Moslem women hailed Murva rid repeatedly to ask where we were going (knowing full well the answer), and Murvarid parried their questions ingeniously. Then

FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

205 abruptly, without wall or ditch, we passed into the desert-at first patches of white salt and then shingle—and were soon joined by Paridun’s helpers coming from the water-tank, with two donkeys and the distinctly wayward cow. At the dadgah a jeep, which had already done the journey from Mazras, was just unloading a group of Hasanabadis-mostly old men at that stage, and women of all ages—and the scene was animated. The bustle had attracted a solitary Egyptian vulture, which circled for a while overhead, 27 but otherwise the desert around was empty of any sign of life.

A woman whose husband had died that spring was busy tending fires in the two sangoks, and everyone as he or she arrived went to them, put incense on the fires, and laid offerings on the stones in that month of June mostly cucumbers and early apples. These, having been offered, were taken up again soon after, to refresh some toiler, or to slake the thirst of the ubiquitous small boys. D. Khodadad arrived about half-past nine, took his place in a side pesgam, where there was some breeze and coolness, and began to solemnize the first of thirteen separate gahambars. The women meantime were busy cooking the food to be blessed. The kitchens soon became hot and smoky, and from them they had to come out into the burning sunshine in order to carry the food to where the Dastur sat. While this work was going on, an impudent Moslem camelteer, returning from carrying salt to Ardekan, brought his beast right up to the dadgah buildings and made it kneel, bubbling loudly, on the sand. He was quickly surrounded by a group of wrathful Zoroastrians, some of whom were for beating him soundly for his unmannerly intrusion; but gentler counsels prevailed, that ‘whether he were good or bad’ it was better to give him a handful of lurk (for which he had come) and let him go in peace, rather than to bring rancour into a holy occasion.

Just before noon D. Khodadad celebrated a final communal

17 I occasionally saw an Egyptian vulture—a relatively elegant black and wbite bird—when cycling to Mazrar with D. Khodadad; and once when I visited the dakhmas of Yazd a pair of common vultures circled high overhead. D. Khodadad told me that when he was young there were many vuitures in the region, of different kinds, and some (presumably lammergeyers) so huge that they stood taller than a man, and were very terrifying. Already by the 1960s, however, the number of animals kept locally had shrunk drastically, with lorry, jeep, and bicycle replacing camel and donkey, and the vultures had almost all vanished with them. Their work at the dakhmas was performed accordingly mostly by the black crows of the desert-handsome birds whose glossy plumage

shone in the sun—and by the hoodie crows which hung around the villages. .

206 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT gahambar for ‘all souls’ on behalf of Mazrac and Hasanabad. The hot, tired women emerged from the kitchens, and a midday meal of consecrated food was eaten wherever there was shade—in the pesgams, or close under the walls. Then everyone rested or slept through the noonday heat. One group of women, sitting in a side pesgam, amused themselves by playing a form of moradūla, a diver sion that belonged properly to Tiragan, and which was being enjoyed that morning in more traditional fashion by girls at home in the villages. Moradula means simply bead-pot’; and the evening before in Sharifabad a group of girls had gone together to fill a big pot (dūla) at sunset with pure running water. This pot had been kept covered from the light of the sky; and each girl had put a token into it—a bead, or ring, or bracelet. A Khorda Avesta was then put over the mouth of the pot, and this was carried to a place where it ‘could not see the sky’—that year an earthen oven in the orchard of the Ziyafat family. The next day the girls met there under a sweet pomegranate tree, and one who was the first-bom daughter in her family fetched the pot, covering it with a corner of her head-veil. The others sat in a circle, and she, having sung a song, drew out a tokeo, and before its owner could reclaim it, she too had to sing something, and so it went on round the circle until the last ornament had its owner again.28

The use of water in this game of forfeits linked it with Tiragan, the rain-festival; and there was another pretty Yazdi custom, whereby in every house where a purse was held on Ruz Tir there would be a big bundle of plaited silken threads of the seven colours of the rainbow. Every woman or child who came to the house was given one of the plaits to bind round the wrist; and they would wear these gay bracelets for ten days, until Ruz Bād, devoted to the yazad of wind; and then they would either throw them into running water, or go to some high place and toss them into the air for the wind to carry away, after which they would sprinkle one another with rose-water and make merry. But in the 1960s it was only old people who could remember such customs, with which they had once

28 Lo Yazd and its villages this game was known instead as čokadūla ‘fate-pot’. There it was insisted that the girl who drew out the forfeits should be young say nine or ten years old rather than a first-born daughter; and Sarvar told me that in Aliabad a variety of things, other than an Avesta, were put on top of the pot, including a fan, a handful of the short corn-stalks used in lighting fires, a short-handled broom, a cucumber quartered in vinegar, and a mirror, all to be covered by a green cloth.

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207 celebrated what was known locally either as the Jašn-e Tīr-o-Testar, or the Jašn-e Tīr-o-Bāz (*Feast of Tir and the Wind’).29 In Sharifabad and Mazra the custom of the rainbow-bands does not seem to have been known, but there the youngsters still splashed one another with water on Tir’s proper day, even if they had come, by the confusion of customs, to play moradula on the first of his month,

· It was hard to think of a rain-festival, though, in the arid heat at the dakhma. The relative quiet of the sun-scorched noontime pause was broken into by the arrival of the first Sharifabadis, and soon the pesgams were full of men and boys, and new groups of women were at work in the kitchens, while outside the handles of metal Vessels grew too hot to touch with the bare hand, and the water carriers toiled endlessly to and fro. D. Khodadad took up his priestly duties again, and celebrated fourteen gahanbars in succession, with only one or two distributions of lurk reaching the women in the kitchens. (Only at the Dadgah-e Tir-Mah was it permitted to use fruit, that is, cucumbers and apples, in the lurk, which was therefore pleasantly cooling.) As well as cooking all the usual foods for boy-o brang, the women made gondoli for the evening meal-a bright yellow mixture of chopped meat, rice, saffron, and herbs, folded in dough and cooked in broth, like dumplings, and they also prepared fried dishes, with meat, rice, and onions.

About five o’clock the heat began to relent, and half an hour later the jeep ventured back to fetch some of the Hasanabadis, and some Mazrac Kalantaris began to load up their donkeys and depart, The last gabambar for ‘all souls’ was celebrated for the Sharifabadis, and then the men and boys gathered together jo family groups, and settled down in a huge horseshoe on the sands to the east of the dadgah, each group taking up a fixed traditional place, with a strip of sand separating one from the dext.30 All around and in the middle of the horseshoe there were tethered donkeys and stacks of bicycles. The women streamed out of the kitchens bearing panfuls of food for their families, and filled their plates, while Rustam

29 Among those who spoke of it was D. Rustam Khodabakhshi of Yazd, who said he could remember as a small boy going to such a purse on Ruz Tir simply to get the silk band. D. Khodadad too remembered as a child the pleasure of wearing the seven-coloured bracelet, and what great store was laid then by old men and women on this observance.

30 See Pl. mb, and cf. Seervai and Patel, ‘Gujarat Pārsis’, 216: ‘On All Souls Day Parsis go to the Towers of Silence, offer prayers for dead relations and friends and in the large yard round the Towers different families . . . spread carpets and hold private jasans.“208 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT e Tehrani went round with a big pitcher of water to slake thirsts (instead of the wine of older days). Having supplied the men’s needs, the women retired either to the kitchens or to the sands just outside, and ate there themselves. The meal was enjoyed in the usual brisk, silent fashion, and soon the big assembly broke up, and a long line began to form along the track back to the village, first boys and youths on bicycles, and then donkey-parties and those on foot, a colourful chain stretching across the desert in the fading evening light. Piruza and Pouran insisted, half in jest, on my mount ing the Belivani cow, while they walked on either side; and leaving Paridun, Murvarid, and their helpers to the task of clearing up, we joined the end of the procession. The ride on the stiff peaked saddle was surprisingly smooth and comfortable, but neither then or on any other occasion could I discover the mystery of guiding the animal, which was controlled simply by a rope tied to one side of her nose ring. The villagers themselves managed this with an incommunicable skill, even when their bovine mounts were wilful, or skittish on frosty winter mornings.

In general rites for the departed were filled wholly with devotion and care; but there was one small observance whose intention was propitiatory, and which had a touch of ancient fear of the dead. This was called säma-asa, from sahm-e aste ‘dread for the bones’, 31 and it was regularly performed by a woman who married a widower, or a man who married a widow, in order to assuage the possible resentment of the dead partner. Thus Turk Jamshidi had been married three times, first to his cousin Piruza, who became ill and could bear him no children. Then at Piruza’s own wish and during her lifetime he married her younger sister Daulat, by whom he had three children. (Such second marriages, if the first were childless, were permitted in both branches of the Zoroastrian community, until the Parsis adopted the English marriage-laws in the second half of the nineteenth century.) When Piruza died, Daulat, taking her place, as it were, as Turk’s only wife, had sama-asa performed. Then Daulat died, and Turk married Şarvar from Aliabad, a lovely young chestnut-haired bride, who had the rite performed in her turn for Daulat, with considerable care. It was carried out by four priests

JI This rite is mentioned by Jackson (Persia Past and Present, 396), who refers there also to one called Yašt-e bine Spendārmiz, intended to expiate any șins committed against Spendarmad, yazad of earth; but he gives no details about its performance.

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209 in the city of Yazd, Her part in it, she told me, was to make a ritual ablution, put on fresh clothes, and be present at the ceremony. The priests took their places in the four corners of a pesgam, and per formed the Yašt-e čõr-sīja, the ‘service of the four corners’, reciting the Vendidad from midnight until dawn, with invocation of the dead woman’s soul. One of the priests had paivand with a garment that had belonged to Daulat, and Sarvar herself lay down beside another of them, made paivand with him by a košti, and slept peace fully. There were seven things on the pesgam to be blessed in the servicepure water (with a little milk in it), loaf sugar, granulated sugar, white sweetmeats, and three different kinds of borage (called go-zabun or ‘cow’s tongue from the shape and feel of its rough leaves). At dawn, when the Vendidad was concluded, Sarvar was given some of the consecrated water to drink, and more to carry home with the six other things. There she made ablution with water into which she poured this consecrated water, standing in a basin so that no drop of it should touch the earth, and pouring it over herself so that it reached every bone in her own body. There after she ate the consecrated sweet things, and drank an infusion of the three kinds of borage.

This rite, which was performed in Yazd during the April that I was there, could also be solemnized by a single priest. D. Khodadad did it thus for his own parishioners, reading, however, only a part of the Vendidad for two or three hours between midnight and dawn. Sometimes too it was asked for by someone for himself if he were sick, to drive away the aches which had come for some other cause into his bones.32 Thus in Urdibehišt Mah in 1964 D. Khodadad did it for an ailing woman. She was present throughout, just as Sarvar had been; but it could also, it was held, be done for an absent person. Then, after the ceremony, a garment which had been blessed at it would be sent to him to wear, together with the consecrated water, and the sweetmeats and borage to be consumed.

In this form the rite was similar in intention to the simpler tan dorosti, the rite for ‘health of the body, which could be performed at any hour, the priest being free to recite what Avestan he thought appropriate (which often included the Bahram Yašt). For the rite

32 A description of the rite performed for this purpose very elaborately in earlier times, with two, three, four, or even forty mobeds, praying together was given by Khudayar D. Sheriyar, Sir J. J. Madressa Jubilee Vol., ed. Modi, 299-301.

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210 SOME RITES OF EXPIATION OR COMFORT to be effective, it was held, there had, however, to be paivand between priest and patient. Thus one hot July evening D. Khodadad came to the Belivani household to perform it for his little piece Mandana, who had been ailing for some days. (He came late, because he had already performed a si-šuy and an ataš buzorg kardan that day.) The child was laid on a folded shawl, and the Dastur sat beside her, so that the shawl formed paivand between them. Tahmina Khanom put before him a plate with barley-grains and dried marjoram leaves, and another with the three kinds of borage, together with sweet meats, cinnamon, and the herb called siyāvašan. Further, two lumps of alum were tucked into the child’s clothing. Fire had of course to be present, but the evening was so warm that at first the brazier was put at the other side of the pesgam, and only gradually brought nearer. The Dastur recited for about forty minutes, at intervals sprinkling the barley and marjoram leaves over the child and across the floor; and towards the end he took the lumps of alum and laid them on the fire, turning them with a metal pin. When the rite was over, Tahmina Khanom studied these lumps for an omen, but Agha Rustam refused to look, saying that the Avestan was powerful, but searching for signs was mere superstition.33

There remains a rite which was occasionally performed by a living person for his own welfare, not in this life but hereafter, namely zande-ravānī,34 This consisted of having the whole of the first-year ceremonies for the dead performed for oneself while alive, which, D. Khodadad said, was ’like a light cast before one on a dark road, instead of behind one’. The observance took its name from the fact that throughout the texts which were recited the words be rasād ašo zande ravān…, ‘may it [i.e. the merit] reach the righteous living soul’, were substituted for the usual prayer for the dead. The ordinary rites for the dead were fully performed, with at least one sedra being consecrated, and at least one blood sacrifice being made; but they could be fitted into a month, or spread out in the usual way through the year. In either case, the observances could be private, with only the close family present, or carried out exactly like funerary ones, with many guests. The more elaborately it was done, thought D. Khodadad, the more merit was acquired for the

33 The alum, softened in the fire, was held to take some shape that would in dicate the cause of the illness, whether man, animal, spirit or other thing’ (see Khudayar D. Sheriyar, art. cit. 300).

34 A good deal is written about this rite in the Rivayats, see Dhabhar, 657, s.v. ‘zinda ravan ceremony’, for references.

FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

211 hereafter. When all the observances had been completed, a ‘gaham bar-e cakhra’ might be founded, to be celebrated annually for the rest of the person’s life. Agha Rustan’s father Noshiravan had had the rite performed for himself in middle age, the observances taking a full year, and had then established a gahambar-observance at the second festival (Maidyõšem), which he himself celebrated for the remaining thirty years of his life, and which his son maintained after him. Occasionally in the 1960s elderly people had zande-ravani performed if they thought there might be no one to carry out the due funerary ceremonies when they were dead. Thus in 1963 D. Khodadad celebrated it for a pious old woman, Mah-Khorshed, formerly of Jaffarabad, who was then living alone in Hasanabad. She had been twice no-swe, once in Yazd and once in Sharifabad, and thought much about the life to come. She was not well off, so in her case the observances were kept very simple and private, and were completed within a month, leaving her with a sustaining sense of safety and tranquillity.