Zoroastrian afterlife beliefs and funerary practices

Malabar Hill, in the cosmopolitan city of Mumbai, is today one of the world's most expensive property markets. And yet the central area of the hillrock peninsula is occupied by the fifty-six-acre walled Zoroastrian funeral grounds, the doongerwadi or 'garden on the hill'. The traditional ancient funerary rites of the Iranian and Indian Zoroastrian communities are essentially the same, those of the Iranians being a little more elaborate. Zoroastrians believe that human beings are comprised of a mortal body and an immortal soul. After a person has died, the soul leaves the body and remains within the material world for three days and three nights. Ceremonies are subsequently celebrated daily until the tenth day and then again on the thirtieth day after death, the first anniversary day, and annually for thirty years, or for roughly a generation. Sogdian traders who died in China were placed for decomposition into stone sarcophagi, or on funerary couches in underground stone-lined chambers

Afterlife · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Literature · Zoroastrianism · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Linguistics and Cultural Studies · Soviet and Russian History

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  Open Access•Mark Shtanov•Social Epistemology•2025

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