While the Zoroastrian communities in India are trying to preserve the ritual of sky burials by installing vulture aviaries or using solar panels to direct sunlight and heat to speed up the decomposition process, Zoroastrians in diaspora cannot access this traditional funerary ritual at all.²

Even before our interview, Darabsha emphasized that Zoroastrianism as a religion has evolved and changed as the realities of the Zoroastrian community have changed. “I hope you understand that we must adapt, accept local laws, and do our best to keep the scriptural intentions and directions,” he wrote in an email.

When Darabsha was nine years old, he was initiated into the Zoroastrian religion. In his initiation ceremony, called the Navjote, he received his sudreh, traditional white undergarments made of silk and linen, and kutsi, a sacred belt made from 72 pieces of woolen thread, used in daily ritual.³ It wasn’t until his late teens, however, that he tried to understand his faith and think critically about his religious, cultural, and ethnic identities. “That is the time, in my heart, I stopped being a Parsi and became a Zoroastrian,” he said.

Even so, Darabsha, like most in the Zoroastrian community, struggles with defining what that means. Darabsha is active in teaching Zoroastrian youth about their faith and says the first question he poses to students is: “What is the name of our religion?” He asks this because they usually don’t know.

“This is a serious problem because we have gotten so far away from our original thinking,” Darabsha said. “The concept of naming a religion after its founder is very European.”

The term Zoroastrianism stems from the name Zoroaster, who the ancient Greek historian Herodotus called Zarathustra, the founding prophet of the faith. Previously, the community likely referred to themselves as Mazdayasnis: worshippers (yasni) of wisdom (mazda). Today, Zoroastrians refer to themselves as Zoroastrians, Zarathustis, Mazdeans, or Mazdayasnis. Darabsha, personally, doesn’t prefer one label over another, but he tends to default to Zoroastrian, due to its wide use.⁴

“A rose by any other name is still a rose,” he said with a chuckle.

As an adult, Darabsha dreamed of coming to the United States, envisioning a place that was without corruption. A few years after arriving as a student, however, news of the Watergate scandal broke, shattering Darabsha’s illusions about the United States. As a result, Darabsha decided to emigrate from his Parsi Zoroastrian community in Mumbai (Bombay), India, to Canada.

Darabsha’s ancestors fled Iran between the eighth and tenth centuries, escaping persecution by Muslim invaders. They arrived in India as refugees, eventually forming the Parsi (literally, “Persian”) community in Mumbai. A popular legend has it that when they first arrived, a king in India sent them a bowl of milk filled to the brim. Instead of consuming it, the leader among the Zoroastrian refugees added a pinch of sugar to it and had it sent back to the king with a message. “It said, ‘we will not overflow your milk,’ ” Darabsha recalled. “ ‘We will only make it sweeter.’ ”

This legend also says that one of the conditions the Parsi refugees had to uphold was the promise not to convert the local population. The Parsis agreed and have kept this promise to this day: Conversion into Zoroastrianism is not permitted without a paternal, ancestral link to the religion, which puts the faith itself at risk of extinction. “There’s not even a quarter million of us left in the whole world,” Darabsha said.

The Muslim conquest of the Sasanian Empire marked the end of the height of Zoroastrianism. Most of the community fled, and those that stayed behind faced oppression and persecution. During this time, it is believed that much Zoroastrian literature and knowledge was destroyed and lost; scholars estimate that only a quarter of the original Avesta, the main source of Zoroastrian scripture, has survived to the present day.⁵

Grief over this loss of land, identity, and security led to attempts to protect and restore the community’s traditions and heritage. Later texts, known as the Pahlavi texts, are dated after the Arab conquests that brought Islam to the region, which the Zoroastrian community saw as an apocalypse in itself. These texts expand on the information provided in the Avestan texts but do so with a sense of anxious urgency, suggesting the community at this time was under extreme stress.⁶

While the Avestan texts have been ritually canonized in their central role in temple rituals and individual practice, the Pahlavi texts have not. This is largely due to the lack of a systemized approach to translation during the Sasanian era and later.⁷ As a result, these later texts do not hold the same liturgical weight as the Avesta. Darabsha, in his daily practice, does not refer to these later Pahlavi texts at all and sees them as disconnected from the original doctrine found in the Avesta.

“This is the price people of Zarathustra have paid, having undergone so many different eras, from being kings of an empire to the downtrodden population in their own land and refugees in other lands,” he said. “The evolution of the belief system is massive.”⁸

There is a deep ecology present in Zoroastrian theology—one that entangles the cosmic and the natural, connects seen and unseen forces, and unites the material and spiritual realms in a cosmic battle against evil. Because the earliest dated texts do not refer to towns, temples, farming, or grains—hallmarks of sedentary lifestyles—scholars infer that Zoroastrianism originated among pastoral nomadic communities.⁹ The community’s reverence for natural elements likely stems from this context, in which fire, water, and fertile land were crucial to survival.

In Ahura Mazda’s (also, Ohrmazd) creation, humans are the mediators between the cosmic and natural realms and are responsible for keeping order on earth. It is through the natural elements that deities reveal themselves and involve themselves in the lives of humans—by way of weather, harvests, fertility, and protection.¹⁰ These elements are not just seen as sacred creations but as extensions of the deities themselves.

Because Zoroastrians see humans as the designated caretakers of this creation, many of their rituals are centered around preventing pollution and purifying what becomes polluted.¹¹ And in Zoroastrianism, pollution is synonymous with dead matter and death.

According to Zoroastrian cosmology, Ahura Mazda, the supreme all-knowing and all-wise god, existed alongside Angra Mainyu (also, Ahriman), his evil primordial twin, in a state of infinite time. Ahura Mazda devised the natural world and temporality to limit the scope of the inevitable battle against Angra Mainyu. In this process, Ahura Mazda created the natural elements and their inhabitants: sky, water, earth, a sole-created plant, a sole-created bull, a sole-created man, and fire. He prescribed deities to the natural elements, each of which was critical to life.

Angra Mainyu was filled with rage after seeing the creation of Ahura Mazda and decided to attack it, polluting it in the process. This invasion corrupted creation with evil and set limited time into motion. The sole-created plant, bull, and man were sacrificed to make room for multitudes of plants, animals, and humans. Death became a part of life, requiring reproduction for the continuation of Ahura Mazda’s creations. The darkness of night began to follow the light of day.Water became salty, soil became infertile sand, plants and animals became venomous, and fire began to produce smoke. Angra Mainyu burrowed himself in the flat earth, forming mountains.

But Ahura Mazda knew this all would happen and sealed the site through which Angra Mainyu invaded his creation. The divine clock, to which Angra Mainyu was then officially bound, started ticking, and the world became his prison.¹²

In Zoroastrian apocalyptic eschatology, the cosmic battle will eventually end, and Ahura Mazda, along with his good creations, will be victorious. Before then, however, Zoroastrian literature, especially the Pahlavi texts, prophesize that the community will experience moral corruption through circumstances brought about by climate change, political changes, and oppression.¹³ This moral corruption, according to the Zand-i Vohuman Yasht, a Zoroastrian apocalyptic text, will be revealed in a shift in funerary rituals:

And all over the world . . . they will hold it lawful to bury the dead, to wash the dead, to burn the dead, to carry the dead to water and fire.—Zand-i Vohuman Yasht 4:23

When Zarathustra asks Ahura Mazda how long it takes for evil forces to occupy the deceased’s body, Ahura Mazda replies “directly after death.”¹⁴ Death is associated with Angra Mainyu and the corruption of life itself. When a person dies, Zoroastrian eschatology says the person’s everlasting spiritual body separates from the decaying physical body.

Because of this, the Vendidad, an Avestan text, forbids corpses, or any dead matter from a living body (e.g., hair, fingernail clippings, skin, or bodily fluids), to come into contact with the natural elements—fire, water, and earth. Burials, cremations, or putting a corpse into water were all seen as violations against the will of Ahura Mazda.

“Earth, water, fire are good creations of god,” Darabsha said. “So how can you put a dead body, which is considered bad, into the good creation and defile it?”

In diaspora, some Zoroastrians have tried to transport the bodies of their deceased loved ones back to India, where they can be placed in the Towers of Silence. The issue with this, besides the lack of vultures, is that many countries and airlines will require the body be embalmed before flying and to get through customs. The chemicals used in the embalming process can be lethal to the birds.

So Zoroastrians in the diaspora must choose between the earth (burial) or fire (cremation). Because fire is considered the most sacred element in its strong association with Ahura Mazda, many orthodox Zoroastrians choose burial,¹⁵ but this is not always possible.

When Darabsha’s father in-law passed away, the family could not bury him in northern Canada where he lived. The issue was weather-related. “In the north, the ground freezes in the winter,” Darabsha said. “And it stays frozen.”

Another reason sky burials are preferred by Zoroastrians, where possible, is because they speed up the decomposition process, not letting death linger longer than it has to. But when the ground freezes, Darabsha says it turns the earth into a refrigerator, which will slow down the decaying process. “How is being buried the right thing in that case?” Darabsha asked.

An important part of Darabsha’s daily practice involves thinking about the scripture and available options and exercising the wisdom gained by practicing the faith. “We are a free people who can decide what is best for us,” Darabsha said. Without any hesitation he added: “As for me, I have already gone and paid the crematorium.”

Toby Cox, MTS ’23, is a journalist and storyteller. Her favorite stories to write are those that reveal unexpected connections among religion, culture, and ecology.