THE TRADITIONAL PARSI SARI....GARA

Every parsi girl that gets married surely takes two things from her mother to her new home...those two things are the 2 types of traditional parsi saris....one is the kore ni sari which is a sari having a richly embroidered border that is the kore... and the second must have sari for every parsi woman is the garo...

The garo is the traditional parsi sari which is heavily embroidered with intricate designs. The embroidery may be done on silk, satin or georgette materials. The price of garo depends on the intricacy of the embroidery and also on how old it is... the more old the gara sari is more value it has...because in olden days the ladies took great pain to hand stitch these garas which are usually machine-embroidered these days. Usually there are a lot of Chinese characters embroidered in the garas like Chinese birds, fishermen and Chinese houses. We see this influence because gara embroidery originates from china with whom our ancestors used to trade in ancient times. Gara saris look best in rich colours like red, wine, purple or black on which the white coloured thread used for embroidery just shines through.

If you see the pictures of gara saris that I have posted you will see how richly embroidered they are and you can imagine how much hard work goes into the making of a gara especially if it is hand made. http://www.thehorizons.com/craft/gara/main.htm This is a lovely site which gives us some very useful information on the gara sari.

DID WE ZORASTRIANS EVER CONVERT?

A few days ago my friend Manju asked me that though Parsis never convert but you people must have converted at one point of time right? And to tell my readers frankly I never knew the answer to this question. So I researched a bit on net and I found a very useful writeup which answered Manju's question of whether parsis ever converted...

The answer to this question is that no... Prophet Zarathushtra never converted anyone because in the time era that he lived none of the great religions of the world had been established yet, so there was no religion from which Zarathushtra could have converted anybody.

For deeper understanding I recommend my reader friends to go to this site written by MR. RONI. K. KHAN in which he has given a detailed understanding of whether zorastrians ever converted people.

A SHORT LIFE SKETCH OF DASTURJI JAMSHEDJI SORABJI KUKADARU

In this post I present a short life sketch of KUKADARU SAHEB written by ERVAD BURJOR H. ANTIA. in the book of ZARTHOSHTI ANJUMAN ATASH BAHRAM A BOOK CELEBRATING THE 100 YEARS OF ITS ENSHRINEMENT.

• Kukadaru saheb was born at Surat on 26th May, 1831 A.D. on Jamyad roj of Avan month as per the Parsi Calendar. He died at Bombay at the age of 70 years on 4th January, 1900 on Behram roj of Fraverdin month.
• Dasturji Kukadaru led a life of an ascetic. He used to wash his own clothes. He used to take only one meal per day that too also rice and ghee. He abstained from eating non-vegetarian food. His main food was milk and fruits. Many a time he used to cook rice by keeping a vessel of rice in the sun and recite holy manthras or nirangs.
• He led a simple,pure and frugal life. Necessities of his life were very few and he used to spend his whole day in chanting Avesta prayers from which he derived a spiritual force, which was evidenced by several miracles performed by him as hereinafter stated.
• DASTURJI KUKADARU had made many predictions which came to be true during his own life time. He could predict what was going to happen in the future e.g. he had predicted the day, date and time of passing away of DASTURJI PESHOTAN SANJANA OF WADIAJI ATASHBAHRAM. Similarly Dasturji Saheb had predicted the exact dates of death of England's Queen Victoria, Sir Dinshaw Petit and that of several other personalities of the then Bombay. However DASTURJI KUKARDARU is even today remembered particularly for his following miracle.
• The late DASTURJI JAMASPJI, erst-while High Priest of Anjuman Atash Bahram, requested Dasturji Kukadaru to provide some financial help for the Anjuman Atashbahram building at Dhobitalao, where he lived and practised priesthood. As there were not enough funds even for laying the foundation stone of this Atashbehram building, a list of Donors was circulated. Kukadaru Sahed had neither money nor property nor any kind of material wealth from which he could contribute any sum for the construction of the Atashbehram building. The late DASTURJI JAMASPJI repeatedly requested DASTURJI KUKADARU to contribute something. Thereupon Dasturji Kukadaru told Dasturji Jamaspji to write against his name whatever figure he deemed fit as his contribution. Thereupon the High Priest, the late Dasturji Jamaspji wrote the figure of Rs. 10,000/- against Dasturji Kukadaru's name. Dasturji Kukadaru was a bit puzzled as to how he could donate such a huge amount. However, Dasturji Kukadaru requested the High Priest to come next day to collect his donation. Dasturji Kukadaru began to meditate and with concentration he prayed to AHURA MAZDA for a solution to save his prestige. When Dasturji Jamaspji came to collect the contribution of Rs. 10,000/-, Dasturji Kukadaru directed him to go to the next room and said that whatever he could find there, sell it and take its sale proceeds as his contribution. When dasturji Jamaspji went to the next room, he was pleasantly surprised to find a bright bar of gold. Dasturji Jamaspji sold the same and its sale proceeds came to exact amount of Rs. 10,000/-. This incident is a solid proof of power of prayers achieved by Dasturji Kukadaru.
• The power of prediction of achieved by DASTURJI KUKADARU by prayers. He was recognized as a well-known astrologer in the Parsi community of those days and was the Chief Panthaki of late Seth Shapurji Kappawalla Daremeher of Tardeo since inception.
• On 17th October, 1987, at the function for consecrating the Anjuman Atashbehram, he was also presented with a shawl.
• KUKADARU SAHEB was a scholar and he prepared a tanslation of our great religious Volume Dinkard. He also translated 8 books of Pahelvi Dinkard with their pure Gujarati translation within a period of four years.
• Man's happiness, peace and prosperity can be obtained to a great extent, by his own devotion, power and thought force. This principle has been able re-established by this holy man. Man's own will-power plays a very important part in shaping his destiny. If this will-power is matched by devotion with a pure heart and reverence, the worst of illnesses and obstacles can, to a great extent, be reduced. DASTURJI KUKADARU based his whole life on this principle.

In the end the writer tells us that Dasturji Kukadaru Saheb was a very pure and holy soul. He lived like a saint and served our religion in a true sense and left behind him a legacy of powers of prayers. His photograph after about 97 years of his death is seen at several places in our homes and in our fire temples and he is remembered every day by our co-religionists with reverence.

THE LATE DASTURJI JAMSHED ERWAD SOHRAB KUKADARU 

CONSECRATION OF AN ATASH BAHRAM

The fire-temples are divided into three grades. The Fire belonging to the first grade is that enshrined in an ATASH BAHRAM, the second is the Fire of an ADARYAN and the third is the DADGAH Fire. There are 8 Atash Bahrams in India, the most sacred being the Iranshah at Udwada. Among others, one is in Navsari, two are in Surat and four are in Bombay. The 8 Atash Bahrams are:

IRANSHAH ATASH BAHRAM IN UDWADA.

ANJUMAN ATASH BAHRAM IN NAVSARI.

DADISETT ATASH BAHRAM IN BOMBAY.

MODI ATASH BAHRAM IN SURAT.

VAKIL ATASH BAHRAM IN SURAT.

WADIAJI ATASH BAHRAM IN BOMBAY.

BANAJI ATASH BAHRAM IN BOMBAY.

ANJUMAN ATASH BAHRAM IN BOMBAY.

An Atash Bahram fire is consecrated through an elaborate series of rituals during which the highest laws of purity are maintained by the priests involved in the process, the bringing together of the sixteen fires representing the natural order as well as the different trades and classes of ancient Iranian society, reflects the universality of the Atash Bahram Fire. The fire of lightning, for example, is collected when lightning strikes the earth and is witnessed by two Zorastrians; whilst the sixteenth fire, the household fire of a Zorastrian is made by the priest by first creating a fire through friction using flint stones or twigs and then mixing it with fire from the hearth of a Behdin.

The sixteen fires required for the consecration of an Atash Bahram(FIRE OF VICTORY) are as under: FIRE OF:

1. A BURNING CORPSE.
2. DYER.
3. KING OR RULING AUTHORITY.
4. POTTER.
5. BRICK-MAKER.
6. ASCETIC.
7. GOLDSMITH(OR ALCHEMIST)
8. MINT.
9. IRONSMITH
10. ARMOURER.
11. BAKER.
12. BREWER, DISTILLER OR IDOL-WORSHIPPER.
13. SOLDIER OR TRAVELER.
14. SHEPHERD.
15. ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY.
16. ZORASTRIAN, THAT IS A DASTUR (HEAD-PRIEST), A MOBED (PRIEST) OR A LAYMAN AND OF FRICTION BY FLINT AND PIECES OF WOOD.
    

This extract has been taken from the book A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANJUMAN ATASH-BAHRAM-MUMBAI (1897-1997).