For millennia, the Parsis have placed their dead in buildings called dakhma (“tower of silence”). These are built so that the bodies of the dead do not contaminate the sacred elements of earth, fire and water. On these towers, bodies decompose and scavengers eat the flesh from their bones. Only when the bones of the deceased have been bleached by the sun and wind after a year are they collected and placed in the ossuary in the center of the tower. The decomposition of the body is further accelerated by lime, which is then filtered through coal and sand together with rainwater, and subsequently washed into the sea.
However, this ancient ritual is under threat today due to the reduction of the vulture population in the area, writes The Guardian. “We are no longer able to fulfill our traditions,” said Hoshang Kapadia, an 80-year-old from Karachi, who says the essence of the ritual is to “take less and give more.” “We lost our way of life, our culture.”
Photo: Profimedia.cz
Dakhma in Iran
In Karachi, built on the riverine ecosystem of the Indus River Delta, only 800 Parsis live among a population of 20 million. Only two towers of silence remain in the city, and both are almost non-functional. “Massive urbanization and environmental changes in Karachi made us rethink our burial rites as dakhms were mostly built on hills far from urban areas,” said Shirin, another resident of Karachi.
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She also explained the real essence of the involvement of vultures in this ceremony. “The vulture’s mystical eye is believed to aid the soul in its cosmic transition, and offering one’s deceased body to these birds is considered the ultimate act of generosity by a devout Zoroastrian. Our tradition is dying. Our culture is dying in a time of increasing environmental change,” she lamented.
Unlike many scavengers, the vulture is classified as a “necessity” scavenger. This means that it does not “switch” between predation and eating carrion, as suits it, like mammalian scavengers, but is completely dependent on finding the remains of dead animals. In recent decades, these birds have been dying in large numbers on the Indian subcontinent, especially due to indirect poisoning with the anti-inflammatory substance diclofenac administered to cattle.
Ingestion of this substance along with the flesh of dead cattle causes vultures to experience painful swelling and inflammation, and eventually death from kidney failure. By 2007, therefore, according to surveys, 97% of the representatives of the three most important vulture species had disappeared from India and the surrounding areas. India, Pakistan and Nepal have already banned the use of diclofenac because of this, and vultures born in captivity are being released into the wild in India.
The Indian Parsis are now experimenting with new techniques such as keeping vultures in captivity or using “solar concentrators” to speed up the decomposition of bodies. However, these concentrators only work in clear weather, so many resort to other methods of burial. “Parsis in Karachi are forced to use alternative methods like cremation or burial in designated Parsi cemeteries,” Kapadia said.
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