Zoroastrianism: Architecture, Culture, and Arts
Seventh class in a series on the TISS-PARZOR Academic Programme in Culture & Civilisations: A Zoroastrian Perspective. From intangible culture to the tangible. Culture your senses perceive.
Prof. Shernaz Cama whipped through the first hour. Fortunately, I’d finished the reading and had watched the first, shorter video of Maafret, The Awakening, The Zoroastrian Creation Myth by Dadi D. Pudumjee. My iPad wouldn’t launch the second, longer password-protected film on Vimeo. I finally watched it today on my laptop as I drank my mocha and thought about parallels with the burgeoning Canadian art scene decades earlier when artists here established their painting styles and subjects as legitimate art. Makes me think about how every new country explores its emerging ethos through creating its own unique art and culture.
Prof. Cama notes two aspects to Zoroastrian culture:
Magpie culture.
Eclectic cultural elasticity.
Basically, Parsis borrowed from other cultures — European, Iranian, local Indian — and grafted them onto their own Persian one, creating a unique melding. They also adapted to have their tangible culture remain under the radar as per the rules I wrote about in the previous post.
Other cultures adopted some of Zoroastrianism’s tangible culture and presented them wholly as their own invention. More evidence of our cultural genocide.
Architecture
We’re all familiar with the Muslim architectural style of a round dome on a square base. But is it Muslim in origin?
Nope.
It’s Zoroastrian. It’s a Sasanian architectural innovation that the Zoroastrians created when they took their rough and tumble outdoor fire temples and moved them inside, into beautiful edifices. The Muslims co-opted this architectural style in famous buildings like the Taj Mahal. Similarly, the beautiful Zoroastrian Persian blue tile work became synonymous with Islamic architecture.
When the Parsis fled to India and agreed to be under the radar, they built their fire temples at the end of narrow lanes inside unobtrusive buildings like houses. Wealthy Parsis architected their homes to look on the outside like just any other ordinary house. But the exterior hid vast drawing rooms, inner courtyards, beautiful art, and splendid carved furniture. The plain exteriors and narrow entrances ensured protection and made the Parsis keep to themselves.
Only recently, with the sponsorship of wealthy Parsis, have the fire temples been tranformed into grand places with marvellous welcoming statues. Zoroastrians are emerging from under the radar!
People of the Loom
Parsi women weave the kusti of 72 threads from lamb’s wool. We watched a film showing how they did it with hand looms when women sat on the floor on large verandahs to weave this intricate religious thread. Then they invented a foldable loom that could fit in narrow spaces while the weaver sat on a chair. Parzor filmed that method of this sacred tradition as well. The intricacy and skill required reminded me of watching young women with dextrous fingers and excellent eyesight make Venetian lace when I visited Venice.
This video gives a glimpse into the social aspect and the skill involved.
Speaking of which, Parsi women used to hand-stitch their wedding Sudreh, which also included lacework. It seems like girls and women in many different cultures used to all learn needlework, embroidery, and lacework for most of humanity’s time on Earth. It’s only relatively recently that we’ve farmed out these skills.
On a personal note, I used to sew, but my embroidery was nothing to write home about. My knitting on the other hand featured textural designs and brought me warm nights in winter until two car crashes put paid to the whole thing. Seatbelt injuries treated only with physio and not treated with photobiomodulation therapy lead to lifelong vulnerability to chronic pain and flareups, which knitting triggers. Home devices alleviate but cannot heal when initial treatment is lacking.
Food
We came to my favourite part: food. I intend to make food more prominent in the last novel of The Q’Zam’Ta Trilogy. As I crafted novel 3, The Soul’s Turning, I pondered dishes in the far, far future. This week, after class, I mulled over the new information on Parsi food until an answer popped out on my walk. I will adapt Parsi dishes and make them the dishes of the third society in far, far future climate-changed Toronto.
Parsi food focuses on meat. Apparently, mutton is big. We didn’t have mutton growing up. My grandmother didn’t cook with it as far as I can recall. But then we didn’t have a lot of money. Pomfret is the fish I remember from Bombay. I choked on a bone one time. Dad got it out, but it took a while. I had to be coaxed to eat it again. I wonder why, eh? In my carnivore days, it remained my favourite fish, long after we arrived in Canada and couldn’t get it here until I learnt how to cook wild trout in my twenties. So it was like a blast from the past to hear Pomfret is a favourite fish of the Parsis. Unfortunately, like most fish in the sea, its population is decimated from overfishing, pollution, environmental degradation, and climate change. It seems to me that good thoughts would lead humans to no longer eat this fish (well, all seafood, really), clean up its environs, and restore its natural habitats, like Toronto is doing with the mouth of the Don River.
Magpie culture meant that Parsi cooks brought the dried fruits and nuts of Iran and melded them with the spices and vegetables of Gujarat and their own meaty Persian dishes. It’s interesting that eclectic cultural elasticity doesn’t seem to apply to moving from meat-centric to vegetarianism. I know of no other culture — including trendy chefs’ focus on eating every part of an animal — which is as meat-centric. It was strange to read and hear that including vegetables in meat dishes distinguishes Parsi food when vegetables seem like an afterthought. Yet, as I thought about it, my grandmother always had onions, tomatoes, and peas in her dishes. I suppose that’s a vegetable-inclusive approach…right?
Prof. Cama showed us three famous Parsi bakeries and dairies, which I knew nothing about, but my parents probably did.
Parsi Dairy Farm innovated and spread its products nationwide while Kayani Bakery in Pune preferred to limit its production in order to stay local. Dotivala Bakery in Surat stays true to magpie culture by continuing to bake biscuits from Dutch recipes.
One thing that confused me was that my family taught me we make Dhansak only for the feast following a funeral. Yet the class and readings talk about Dhansak as a traditional dish served any time and is a favourite. At least, I agreed with them on Sev. One of the most delicious desserts I used to make a lot. My Uncle made Rava, and we’d serve both at extended family meals.
Silver, Wood, and Jewellery
Silver symbolizes purity and plays a role from birth to death and beyond. This section explained why silver was so prominent in my early life and why my grandmother taught me to decorate our sweets with silver paper.
Parsis were known for their skill with woodworking, crafting intricate lacey designs and carvings. It’s why they became skilled shipbuilders (see my last post).
Parsis knew how to embroider delicate, transparent silks in such a way that the embroidery didn’t weigh down the fabric. They used Persian, Chinese, Indian, and European motifs. Roosters symbolized protection; fish, plenty; and flowers, blessings.
Prof. Cama lamented the loss of Parsi jewellery through formerly wealthy families selling it in order to survive. Sold jewellery is scattered around the globe and loses its connection to the Zoroastrian culture. That’s what happened to my grandmother’s jewellery, probably before I was born. Only a few seed pearls and jade spheres from a long-broken-up necklace remain.
Dadi Pudumjee
Our guest lecturer was Dadi Pudumjee, a puppeteer. That word is insufficient to describe his innovative approach to theatre or the performing arts. The short movie homework we had was his dance, puppet, music, and spoken word performance that depicted the Zoroastrian Creation story and the battle between good and evil (see below).
His works span the gamut of educational workshops on HIV and TB awareness to professional presentations on Indian stories, mostly not Zoroastrian ones. Puppets are a means to tell a story and can put distance between the audience and a difficult message such that one can tell it. He uses not only soaring puppets, small puppets, puppets made out of found or local objects; but he also uses actors, dancers, music, spoken word, text on screens, projectors, lights, and objects to express a story or message.
Until Pudumjee’s presentation and watching the film on Kekoo Ghandy, I always thought of myself as having inherited my writing from my mother’s British side, that art is not a Parsi thing. Even though my father and Uncle Homi were photographers, their photography was a hobby not a focus of their lives. Even though my grandmother was an accomplished violinist and pianist, who performed publicly until the death of her daughter, I didn’t view my musicality as something to focus on in my adult life. In fact, my piano playing was seen as unimportant to adult life. And then my brain injury finished the job by nixing my talent.
When Prof. Cama said, “We need to support our young people to be artists instead of telling them to be engineers or whatever,” I had to write it down. Here I am decades into adulthood, feeling like I finally have permission from my Parsi side to pursue the arts. I hope the next generation in my family feels that permission, too, and grabs the freedom to pursue their artistry.