Adapting Ritual.
Meera Subramanian, senior editor at our sister site Killing the Buddha, has an article in today's Wall Street Journal on the crisis Parsis now face with the extinction of vultures; since the time of Herodotus, they have relied on these birds to dispose of their dead. Subramanian writes: In the earthly realm of humans, Parsis also believe in the ritual purity of fire, soil and water, elements that shouldn't be sullied by pollution from a defiling corpse. So while virtually all other cultures dispose of their dead by burial or cremation, Parsis have followed a more unusual method. Yet after millennia, that method now has been called into question, forcing a crisis of faith whose only answer is adaptation.
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Meera Subramanian, senior editor at our sister site Killing the Buddha, has an article in today’s Wall Street Journal on the crisis Parsis now face with the extinction of vultures; since the time of Herodotus, they have relied on these birds to dispose of their dead. Subramanian writes:
In the earthly realm of humans, Parsis also believe in the ritual purity of fire, soil and water, elements that shouldn’t be sullied by pollution from a defiling corpse. So while virtually all other cultures dispose of their dead by burial or cremation, Parsis have followed a more unusual method. Yet after millennia, that method now has been called into question, forcing a crisis of faith whose only answer is adaptation.