Parsis

Published on 6th March, 2016, in Mumbai Mirror. The agiary is off limits to non-Parsis, but the basis of the exclusion may be common to the Vedas and the Avesta. Locally they are known as Godha, these gigantic winged bulls with male human heads that flank the entrance to an agiary, which is Gujarati for a Parsi fire temple. Known to scholars as Lammasu, they were guardians to shrines and palaces of ancient Sumeria, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia and Mesopotamia. Today, in Mumbai and parts of Gujarat, they continue to be part of a living faith, Zoroastrianism, kept alive by the Parsis, whose ancestors immigrated to ..