In the Towers of Silence, an ancient ritual of death comes under threat
By Peter Foster in New Delhi
(Filed: 12/09/2006)
The viability of the centuries-old Zoroastrian custom of allowing vultures to consume the corpses of its devotees has been called into question after a relative of one of the dead discovered piles of rotting bodies lying almost untouched by the birds.
Dhun Baria, a member of Bombay's Zoroastrian community, known as Parsis, was shocked to be told that the body of her mother had lain untouched for nine months after she was laid to rest at the Towers of Silence, a stone well in Bombay where the dead are laid out for the vultures.
The Parsi community has been facing mounting difficulties over how to cope with their dead — about 1,000 a year — since India's vulture population suffered a catastrophic decline in the 1990s.
Graphic new photographs from inside the Towers — which according to strict rules only Khandiyas, or pall bearers, are allowed to enter — has led to liberal Parsis questioning whether the community should now cremate or bury its dead.
The pictures show piles of rotting corpses, some with the eyes gouged out by crows and other scavengers.
According to the tenets of the religion founded in ancient Persia by the prophet Zarathustra in the 7th century BC, the bodies should be picked clean in four days in order to release the spirit of the deceased.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... rsis12.xml
23 Nov 2006, 7:02 pm
