Parsi funeral (Dokhmenashini Custom)

Parsi funeral 

A Parsi funeral, or Dokhmenashini, is a unique practice that involves placing a deceased person's body in a Tower of Silence (Dakhma) to be returned to nature. 

The process of cremation in Zoroastrianism is called Dokhmenashini. In this process, instead of cremating or burying the body, it is kept in the Tower of Silence or Dakhma. Dakhma is a circular building where the body is kept in the open, in sunlight. After this, birds like vultures, eagles, and crows eat the body.   

Dokhmenashini Custom   

• 'Dokhmenashini' is a 3000 year old funeral tradition of the Parsi community. According to this, the dead bodies of Parsi people are kept in 'Dakhma', also known as 'Tower of Silence', for the last rites.
• The 'Tower of Silence' is a circular structure, located away from the habitated area. The carcass is placed on its top, where it is consumed by vultures in form of their food and the bones gradually decompose on their own.
• Parsis believe in 'Ahura Mazda Ishwar'. Elements like earth, water and fire are considered very sacred in this religion. They believe that burning the dead body leads to firegetting polluted while burial to leads to earth getting polluted and water is polluted by flowing the dead body in the river.

Parsi funeral rituals

Numerous ceremonies are held as part of the Parsis’s final rituals to dispose of the dead. With a focus on spiritual purity and the circle of life, these ceremonies strive to respect the deceased.

The three-step preparations are : 

• Separation: Keeping the deceased in a separate room to prevent spiritual impurity.
• Purification: Performing ritual ablutions.
• Clothing: Draping the deceased in white, symbolising purity.

Sacred rituals that are followed:

• Sagdid (viewing): Family and friends pay respects.
• Navjote (initiation): Prayers are recited to reconnect the soul to divine forces.
• Vendidad (purification): Rituals are performed to cleanse the soul.
• Yasna (worship): Offerings to Ahura Mazda (the supreme deity) are done.

Post-funeral rituals include:

• Uthamna (four-day ceremony): Prayers are held for the departed soul and offerings are made in his remembrance.
• Chhahum (forty-day ceremony): This commemorates the soul’s journey.
• Annual memorials: This is meant for honouring the loved ones.

Changing Parsi traditions

• With the vulture population in India declining, an increasing number of Parsis are choosing cremations over the customary Towers of Silence in recent years.
• Since we consider dead bodies to pollute the fire which we worship, they are taken to the electrical crematorium or cremated through biogas
• According to the 2024 research, cremations accounted for barely seven to eight per cent of Parsi funerals in Mumbai prior to the establishment of the Prayer Hall. Crematoriums now host 15 to 20 per cent of all Parsi funerals.

Vultures extinction

• The loss of habitat brought on by urbanisation has resulted in a continuous fall in the vulture population in India.
• The livestock form of the medication Diclofenac, which was created in the early 1990s, was also the primary reason. For vultures that were consuming cow carcasses, it turned out to be hazardous.
• The drug was banned in May 2006, but by then it had decimated 95 per cent of these birds.