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Surely there are still things dying (both people and animals) in India? Maybe there are more people who can afford a burial rather than being eaten by birds?
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Contaminating the elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water) with decaying matter such as a corpse is considered sacrilege. Instead of burying the corpse, Zoroastrians traditionally laid it out on a purpose built tower (dokhma or 'Tower of Silence') to be exposed to the sun and eaten by birds of prey such as vultures
Does a dead body care whether it is food for worms and slowly eaten or for vultures who can clean it to the bones in a day? It is not about affording a burial but returning the body to where it came from - the elements. Different outlooks and definitely makes more sense than putting the body in a box in my opinion.
. Aka Parsi they are a small and wealthy community of Industrialists. Highly philanthropic. JD Tata has donated a chair at Harvard business school. I think they can afford any kind of burial and this is what the believe in.
Surely there are still things dying (both people and animals) in India? Maybe there are more people who can afford a burial rather than being eaten by birds?
I think it’s a matter of the decline in vulture population impacting Parsi religious practices (and not the other way around).
Surely there are still things dying (both people and animals) in India? Maybe there are more people who can afford a burial rather than being eaten by birds?
The vulture thing also happened in Siam at various times, particularly when epidemics hit. Wat Saket (the Golden Mount) in Bangkok was one place where such behaviors were done at least during widespread epidemics.
If you're going to cremate a love one and plan to spread their ashes, then remember to check your local laws to see what's legal and illegal before doing it.
Logically, all bodies eventually decompose to dust. Embalming only slows the process down and still greatly changes the body. Some people die in explosions and crashes who are reduced to ashes in the process. Others are dismembered, or suffer other forms of mayhem.
If god can resurrect bodies from dust, or extract the righteous from a meat grinder or the impact crater of a plane crash, he can do it from ashes.
If you try to argue that cremation is a desecration of some kind (like the Greek Orthodox Church does) then you have to argue that the process of decay of the body is somehow god-ordained. It is similar to the argument against contraception in a way ... or even the argument some had against anesthesia when it was invented. Never interfere in natural processes. Taken to its "logical" conclusion, one shouldn't use cell phones, one should shout or use a runner. After all cell phones aren't "natural". You end up picking really strange hills to die on when you start thinking like that.
Here's a summary of various religious views on the matter:
Good post, I read some place that Jews or somebody drill holes in the bottom of the casket to joining the earth as fast as possible.
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