to keep it as close as possible in character to the age-old cult of the hearth-fire, and to discourage elaboration". While the fires themselves had special names, the structures did not, and it has been suggested that "the prosaic nature of the middle Persian names ( kadag, man, and xanag are all words for an ordinary house) perhaps reflect a desire on the part of those who fostered the temple-cult. Apparently, it was only in the Atash-i Vahram that fire was kept continuously burning, with the Adaran fires being annually relit. "It seems probable that there were virtually only two, namely the Atash-i Vahram, and the lesser Atash-i Adaran, or 'Fire of Fires', a parish fire, as it were, serving a village or town quarter". Following the rise of the Sassanid dynasty, the shrines to the Yazatas continued to exist, but with the statues – by law – either abandoned or replaced by fire altars.Īlso, as Schippman observed, there is no evidence even during the Sassanid era (226–650 CE) that the fires were categorized according to their sanctity. The second, the atroshan, were the "places of burning fire" which became more and more prevalent as the iconoclastic movement gained support. The reverse shows him praying in front of a fire templeīy the Parthian era (250 BCE–226 CE), there were two places of worship in Zoroastrianism: one, called bagin or ayazan, was a sanctuary dedicated to a specific divinity it was constructed in honor of the patron saint (or angel) of an individual or family and included an icon or effigy of the honored. Although the "burning of fire" was a key element in Zoroastrian worship, the burning of "eternal" fire, as well as the presence of "light" in worship, was also a key element in many other religions.Ĭoin of Wahbarz, Persian dynast ( frataraka) of Persis in the 1st half of 2nd century BC, ruling from possibly c. Strabo confirms this, noting that in the 6th century, the sanctuary at Zela in Cappadocia was an artificial mound, walled in, but open to the sky, although there is no evidence whatsoever that the Zela-sanctuary was Zoroastrian. The temple is an even later development: from Herodotus it is known that in the mid-5th century BCE the Zoroastrians worshipped to the open sky, ascending mounds to light their fires.
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In the oldest passages of that liturgy, it is the hearth fire that speaks to "all those for whom it cooks the evening and morning meal", which Boyce observes is not consistent with sanctified fire. That the rituals of fire was a doctrinal modification and absent from early Zoroastrianism is also evident in the later Atash Nyash.
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There is no allusion to a temple of fire in the Avesta proper, nor is there any Old Persian language word for one. It appears at approximately the same time as the shrine cult and is roughly contemporaneous with the introduction of Atar as a divinity. A Parsi-Zoroastrian Jashan ceremony (the blessing of a home).įirst evident in the 9th century BCE, the Zoroastrian rituals of fire are contemporary with that of Zoroastrianism itself.