Fire temple

Fire Temple
Otaşkada
The fire temple of Şahrixazar, Karzaristan
Religion
Affiliation	Ahurayasna

A fire temple (Darvozi: otaşkada, Pardarian: آتشکده) in Ahurayasna is a consecrated place of worship for Ahurans that houses an ever-burning fire. Fire temples usually contain a prayer hall where the local community celebrates religious holidays. The prayer hall leads to an ambulatory surrounding the gunbaz, the sanctuary of the holy fire. The gunbaz is connected to the povi where priests perform the Yasna, Vendidad, and Visperad ceremonies. These are never performed in the gunbaz, where no veneration is offered except to the fire itself. Fire temples also contain fountains, as Ahurans revere both water and fire as agents of purity. Fire temples are organized into three categories corresponding to the grade of fire they contain: Otaş Behram, Otaş Odaron, and Dodgoh.

There is no word for "fire temple" in Old Pardarian and there is no reference to one in the Avesta. The earliest evidence of temples dedicated to fire appears during the 3rd century BC, eventually becoming formalized by the Mihranid Empire in the 2nd century BC. Due to the arrival of Irfani and Hyndanian rule over regions of the Pardarian world, the design of fire temples has since come under the influence of various architectural styles.

As of 2019, there were 90,212 fire temples in the world, 89,300 of which are in Karzaristan, 150 in Zorasan, and 762 in other countries. Historically, non-Ahurans were not allowed to enter Karzari fire temples, though this rule was abandoned in 1930.

History and development

Origins of the cult of fire

Although the first fire temples are thought to have been built during the 3rd century BC, the Ahuran veneration of fire has its origin in the ancient Hyndo-Pardarian religion. Due to the nomadic character of Hyndo-Pardarian society its religion was materially simple and the worship of deities did not involve any temples or idols. Instead, all that was required was a flat, clean piece of ground marked by a furrow. Fire and water were venerated along with deities. Although the former usually involved domestic fires, communities usually had a ritual fire that was lit on occasion or maintained by embers from the nearest hearth.

Despite this, the only fire that continually burned was that of the hearth, maintained as long as the man of the house lived. Hearth fires were regularly tended to and were offered dry wood, incense, and fat from sacrificial animals. Ancient Pardarian priests in particular held that fire, the last of the seven creations that comprise the material world, gave them an animating force that is responsible for all life. This gave fire and its worship a greater significance as that of a universal force.

The relevance of the cult of fire among the Pardarians continued into the time of Takhmaspa, who associated fire with Asha Vahishta, one of the divinities who appeared to him during his revelation and represented order and righteousness (Asha). In the Gathas, Ahurans were instructed to turn towards the Sun or their own hearths to reflect on Asha and the virtues it represented. In the Khordeh Avesta, the Atash Niyayesh, the prayer to fire, states:

The Fire of Ahura Mazda
Gives command to all
For whom he cooks
The night and morning meals

Although fire and its worship have been significant to Ahurans since the foundation of their religion, the fire temple itself did not emerge until much later and even today the basic religious observance of Ahurayasna does not require a fire temple. Within fire temples themselves, ceremonies that do not directly involve the holy fire are forbidden in the gunbaz and those that do are related to the maintenance of a domestic hearth.

Varkanid and Hasravanid periods

The first attestations of Ahuran religious observance start to appear in the 5th century BC with the rise of Varkana. According to Adripathi Adhikari, the Pardarians conducted their worship without temples, instead choosing to go up for communal worship at high places. This is supported by the lack of identifiable temple ruins at Varkanid royal sites such as those at Hazor Sutun and Takhti Hormazd. Adhikari describes the Pardarian sanctuary at Hangmatana as a walled-in mound open to the sky. This custom also explains the existence of stone terraces built high in the mountains in ancient Pardaran and Darvoz.

During the rise of the Hasravanids in the 4th century BC Pardarian religious sites began to feature fire altars, likely a result of cultural influence from regions such as Khazestan, Irvadistan, Ninevah, Badawiya, Darvoz, Tokhariston, and western Hyndana where local religions tended to involve the use of idols and devotional altars. At the Hasravanid capital of Tirazish, archaeological excavations carried out in 1971 uncovered a room in a large citadel structure centered around a massive mud-brick altar with a four-stepped top. In this was a shallow bowl with traces of burning in and around it. Despite speculations that this structure was a fire temple, the bowl is too shallow for the deep layer of ashes required to sustain an ever-burning fire.

Similar fire altars have been found in the outer rooms of fire temples and shrines dedicated to yazatas built after the 3rd century BC that would be kindled during religious festivals and other special occasions. During those occasions, there would have been no need for a deep layer of ash as a priest or layman could constantly attend to it when needed. Another possibility is that the Hasravanid kings started the tradition of royal fires adopted by the Mihranids. Similar to the Hyndo-Pardarian custom of hearth fires that burned for as long as a man lived, Kings would have kindled their personal fires at altars in their own homes, explaining the lack of temple ruins.

The oldest Hasravanid ruin that shares the layout of early fire temples is a large structure found at Tarava. Dating from the reign of Ashavazdah III, its consists of a courtyard leading into a square sanctuary where four free-standing pillars surround what was likely an idol. Since Ahurans did not originally have a temple-building tradition, its layout suggests that Hasravanid and later Mihranid fire temples had image shrines as architectural models. If Karzari archaeologist Roziya Ozod's theory is to be believed, the fire temples first attested in the 3rd century BC originated from a fusion of the religious significance of the hearth fire and the cult of Verethragna, the yazata of victory.

Mihranid period

The reign of Kaykhosrow I of the Mihranid Kingdom during the second half of the 2nd century BC is when the first Mihranid fire temples appear. They followed the layout of typical image shrines and were often built on hills reminiscent of the mountain terraces traditionally used by Ahurans, though less remote and always within reach of regular supplies required to fuel and sustain a holy fire.

The writings of contemporary Phulan and Hyndanian scholars suggest that these temples had ever-burning fires that were only extinguished when the Mihranid king died. The Marathi-Tokharian merchant Bakhshi records that at the death of Kaykhosrow IV "his successor ordered his subjects to carefully extinguish the sacred fires of Hormazd until he was crowned King", a link between the cults of both temple and hearth fire. As the master of the kingdom, the king held the same relation to the fire temple as the master of the house to the hearth. After the rise of the Burzinshahis only lesser fires were allowed to occasionally grow cold while the Otashi Vahrom fires were ever-burning.

The oldest Mihranid ruin that can be identified as a fire temple with reasonable certainty is the oldest structure at Mazoritaş. A ground plan traced by Karzari archaeologist Bobojon Ƣafur resembles that of the Tarava temple, though it differs through the existence of a small chamber behind a square sanctuary with four central pillars surrounding a fire altar. The most detailed literary descriptions of fire temples in the Mihranid Kingdom come from Hyndana. Writing from present-day Mathrabumi in the first half of the 1st century BC, Bakhshi describes the following:

The Pardarians have sanctuaries of considerable size that they refer to as otakhshkadagon. In the middle of each is an altar, upon which there is a large heap of ashes, and upon it the mobeds maintain a fire that is never put out.

In the 1st century AD the Hyndanian scholar Matsyendra says that the Pardarians of Tokhariston had temples where there was an inner chamber with an altar bearing ashes and that at intervals a priest would lay dry wood upon those ashes, reciting holy texts as it caught fire.

Despite its origin in Pardaran, the cult of temple fire was firmly established outside of the Mihranid realm among the Pardarians, Osrushanis, and Tokharians of western Pardaria. The strongest evidence for this can be found at Khalqobod in the western Karzari region of Osrushana where a recent excavation revealed an Osrushani sanctuary where the inner cult room featured two large altars, still covered in a deep layer of ash, flanked by large, colorful reliefs of birds. Though the design of these altars and the nature of the Osrushani religion make it unlikely that this building was an Ahuran temple, they nevertheless show strong Pardarian influences.

Whereas early Mihranid kings tended to have images of Anahita accompany their portraits on coins, this practice ended when Rewniz II replaced Anahita's image with a representation of a fire altar on the reverse of his coins in the 1st century AD - a practice that would continue until the fall of the Arasanid Empire. This coincides with a general trend within the Mihranid realm where opposition to the worship of idols representing prominent yazatas and support for the cult of temple fire grew.

Burzinshahi period

The role of fire temples in Pardarian society reached new heights under the Burzinshahis. When he was still a vassal of the Mihranids, Khodavand I was an active iconoclast who cast out an idol of Anahita at a prominent temple in the Burzinshahi stronghold of Artagan (present-day Ardakan. After overthrowing the Mihranids, his successor Khodavand II made it illegal to worship idols of Ahuran figures. Along with their mobads and nobles, the Burzinshahi kings were active in raising holy fires either in new shrines or to replace older idols.

According to a survey by Bobojon Ƣafur of over a thousand pre-Irfanic fire temple ruins across Zorasan, Karzaristan, and Hyndana, most of the ruins from the Burzinshahi period have been found in the Burzinshahi homeland of eastern Pardaran and the neighboring regions of central Pardaran and western Khazestan. If the accounts of 7th-century Osrushani and Hyndanian scholars are to be believed, the iconoclastic Burzinshahis led a determined drive to raise sacred fires in cities, towns, and villages across their empire. The success of this drive is still heavily debated within academic circles, as most fire temple ruins in regions such as Khazestan and Irvadistan were built by the Arasanids.

Two distinct grades of holy fire emerged under the Burzinshahis. The first grade was the Otashi Vahrom ('Fire of Victory' in Middle Pardarian followed by the Otashi Odaron ('Fire of Fires'). By the end of the Burzinshahi period in the 7th century, Ahuran priests developed a system of observance for holy fires based on their grade. Embers from hearth fires were carried into the presence of an Otashi Odaron to grow cold as their spirit united itself with that of the temple fire. Once a year, the Otashi Odaron was carried to another temple to grow cold in the presence of an Otashi Vahrom, which was the only ever-burning fire.

There was also a third grade called the Odurog ('Little Fire') that was identical to the hearth fire. These could be maintained by a layman unlike the temple fires whose maintenance was restricted to priests, rituals could be performed in its presence, and it could be used to bake unleavened bread for religious ceremonies. The main distinction between an Odurog and a hearth fire is that it burnt in a special place such as a shrine or private sanctuary, giving it the name of Odurogi Dodgoh.

Burzinshahi and Arasanid records show that when an image was removed from a shrine or temple, it was common practice to temporarily install an Odurog there so that the sanctity of the holy fire would drive away any demons that dwelt within the statue. The maintenance of even the lowest grade of fire was much more demanding than that of an image. As a result, many shrines were left empty after the Odurog accomplished its task with only a pedestal on which to light a fire for individual devotion or during religious festivals remaining. The continued existence of these shrines among Ahurans to this day demonstrates that Burzinshahi iconoclasm was not directed at shrines to the yazatas but only to the images within them.