“Tenets and traditions”

I refer to Dr P. D. Sunavala’s letter "Tenets and traditions” (Readers’ Forum, Parsiania, October 21, 2007). Scientists, historians or criminologists studying a subject keep all the evidence, study the customs, read all the existing documents, take into account the disappearance of evidence due to many reasons including purposeful destruction. Persons who only take parts of the whole cannot do justice to the matter as they study ‘part’ facts to suit a personal agenda. Such a study can be termed neither scientific nor modern.

Any layman knows that Zoroastrian philosophy nearly met its end thrice due to written texts being destroyed by those who wanted to wipe it out. Zoroastrianism survived only due to the preservation of the philosophy in the original form, which is oral tradition and rituals.

Real scholars, including the late Prof Mary Boyce and our own Dastur (Dr) Firoze Kotwal and Dastur (Dr) Kaikhus­roo JamaspAsa, have studied Zoroastrianism, taking into consideration all the remaining Zoroastrian texts and practices rewritten by those who are directly responsible for Zoroastrianism resurfacing in its true form, with physical evidence in erstwhile Persia, including some former Soviet states.

Despite this it seems that Sunavala wishes to close his eyes to the physical dakhmas present in erstwhile Persia and former Soviet states where the Zoroastrian religion was practiced. He also says "evidence destroyed is no evidence at all.”

Perhaps the doctor should be informed that evidence is not what is obviously present, but what is sought out by studies especially when evidence has been destroyed or framed. The modern student in the form of scientist or historian forms evidence from mainly what is destroyed. Criminologists, scientists and forensic experts find evidence after studying what the perpetrators did not want us to see.

Egyptologists have just located the real mummy of an Egyptian princess after studying what little remained and putting in place what was destroyed. This can also be done by studying or recreating a scenario of that culture and its practices.

Is Sunavala saying that those directly responsible for Zoroastrianism surviving, including his forefathers, did not know what they were doing when they built the dakhmas? Anyway, no one is forcing him or anyone else to adopt dakhmenashini, so why is he so adamant about ending the system?

RUSTOM JAMASJI