Nevin Kallepalli                                                                               

UC Berkeley California Local Reporting Fellow at Shasta Scout.




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With No Towers of Silence in the West, Zoroastrian Last Rites are a Fraught Affair
THE WEST HAS NO STRUCTURES OR LEGAL PRECEDENT FOR CORPSES TO DECAY IN THE OPEN AIR. FOR THOSE WISHING TO FOLLOW TRADITIONS, FUNERALS ARE A COMPROMISE.
    Juggernaut

    “Towers of Silence, called dakhma in Farsi, are the architectural structures where Zoroastrians traditionally perform their final rites and where corpses are left to decompose under the sun. Historically, dakhmas were erected in places with sizable Zoroastrian communities — Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. As dictated by the Vendidad, a central text of Zoroastrianism, burying or cremating a body defiles the earth with dead matter. Towers of Silence, however, align with a core principle of Zoroastrianism: leave no trace on the Earth.”