04-04-2025
This 1,100-Year-Old Funerary Rite Relies On Vultures — And Its Future Hangs In The Balance
The Parsi community, descendants of Persian Zoroastrians who settled in India over a thousand years ... More ago, have preserved ancient funeral traditions that date back to pre-Islamic Iran. And they involve critically endangered vultures.
In Zoroastrianism, death is not simply an end but a threat. A human or animal corpse becomes a vessel of spiritual pollution, capable of contaminating the living and the sacred elements of earth, fire and water. To prevent this, ancient Persians who followed the teachings of Zarathustra devised an unorthodox solution: they placed their dead atop stone structures known as Towers of Silence, or dakhmas, where scavenging birds would cleanse the remains naturally.
Although closely associated with Zoroastrianism today, this funerary tradition is rooted more deeply in Persian culture, reflecting an ancient respect for the cycles of nature. In India, the Parsis — descendants of Persian Zoroastrians who fled centuries ago — have preserved the practice for over a thousand years, even as the vultures they once depended on have begun to vanish. Here's a closer look into this fascinating funeral tradition.
While Tibetan 'sky burials,' where bodies are left on mountaintops to be consumed by scavengers, might sound similar, the Persian Towers of Silence developed independently, and earlier. It reflects a broader ancient Persian worldview centered on maintaining cosmic purity, rather than the Buddhist philosophical motivations behind Tibetan sky burials. As the Zoroastrian belief goes, corpses are immediately inhabited by Nasu, the demon of decay, at the moment of death.
A Tower of Silence is a circular, raised stone platform, typically built on a hilltop and divided into three concentric rings:
The corpse is laid out in the appropriate ring, exposed to the sun and scavenging birds like vultures, which rapidly consume the soft tissue. This method ensures that the body returns to nature without polluting the sacred elements. Once the bones are cleaned and bleached by the sun, caretakers — traditionally called nasellars — would move the remains into a central well-like pit, the ossuary.
In the Parsi tradition, the bones are left there to gradually disintegrate over time, completing the return to nature without defiling the earth.
Historical accounts from Iran describe similar practices but with some differences. According to 18th-century travelers like Cornelius Le Bruyn, Iranian Zoroastrians left the bones in the dakhma for about a year before burying them. Earlier reports from the 14th to 17th centuries noted more varied methods of exposure, including bodies left in fields, caves or enclosed spaces.
Despite these regional variations over time, the core principle has remained remarkably consistent: ensuring that death does not contaminate the living world, but instead allows the body to return cleanly to nature.
Modern visitors are generally not allowed to enter functioning Towers of Silence (the last of which are mostly in India), out of respect for the sacredness of the site and to avoid spiritual contamination. However, some abandoned towers, particularly in places like Yazd, Iran, can be approached or viewed from a distance.
The cylindrical structure atop the hill is one of the two Towers of Silence in Yazd, Iran. Although ... More the site has not been used for funerary rites since the 20th century, it remains open to visitors who can climb the hill and explore the historic platform.
Three vulture species once dominated Indian skies: the Indian vulture (Gyps indicus), the slender-billed vulture (Gyps tenuirostris) and the white-rumped vulture (Gyps bengalensis). All three are now critically endangered.
For centuries, vultures efficiently helped with the funeral rites, quickly stripping the flesh from the bones within hours. But beginning in the 1980s, vultures across India began to vanish. By 2007, the population had collapsed by more than 99%, devastating not only the Parsis' traditional system but also India's broader ecological balance.
Scientists ultimately traced the cause to diclofenac, a veterinary drug administered to cattle, which proved lethal to vultures feeding on treated carcasses.
In the absence of vultures, the Parsis were forced to innovate. Solar concentrators — reflective devices designed to accelerate dehydration — were introduced atop the towers. However, they are far from perfect. The devices cannot function during the cloudy monsoon season, can only process a few bodies at a time, and their intense heat tends to drive away smaller scavengers like crows. Without vultures, decomposition takes far longer, causing emotional distress for the community.
'Vultures are very quick in eating away the flesh. Now it's working a bit slowly. From an emotional point of view, it is disturbing to some people,' says Ramiyar Karanjia, a Parsi priest.
As Mumbai's upscale Malabar Hill neighborhood expanded around the Doongerwadi forest, home to the Towers of Silence, new high-rises overlooking the site led to concerns from neighbors. Slowly decomposing bodies, once processed discreetly, became a visible and olfactory challenge. One tower was permanently closed after becoming visible from nearby apartments, and air purifiers were installed to mitigate odors drifting into the surrounding neighborhoods.
There is now cautious hope for the future. After diclofenac was banned for veterinary use, conservationists launched successful vulture breeding programs. The Bombay Natural History Society has established a vulture sanctuary within Doongerwadi itself, potentially allowing vultures to return.
If this story makes you reflect on our place in nature's cycles, take a moment to explore your own connection to the natural world by taking the science-backed Connectedness to Nature Scale.
