Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/116

 60 THE OIL-FIELDS AND THE FIRE-TEMPLE OF BAKU

speaks of the devotees as * Indianer,' who were formerly called ' Geber ' ; and he mentions their Yogi austerities, noting also that they burned their dead — a fact sufficient in itself to prove they could not have been true Zoroastrians.^ Pointing in a like direction is an incidental reference by Morier (between 1800 and 1816), when he casually mentions meeting a * Hindu pilgrim ' returning from Baku to Benares. ^

The scholar Eichwald (1825-1826), who gives a clear descrip- tion of the temple and some of the ceremonies, mentions the names of Hindu divinities as invoked in the worship — Rama (' Rahma '), Krishna (* Krisehni '), Hanuman (' Hanuma '), and Agni (' Aglian '), the god of fire — all of which are Brahmanical, as is likewise the blowing on the conch shell (' Tritonmuschel ') in the ritual. His picture of the temple, with its naked worshipers (here reproduced), his reference to the Kangra temple in India, and above all, his mention of a place in the cloister where the devotees burn the body of any of their number that may die, leave no doubt as to the Hindu character of the shrine at that day. He himself (pp. 216-217) properly emphasizes the fact that the Indian fire-worshipers at the temple had wrongly been called Gabrs ('Gueber').^

The German poet and student Friedrich Bodenstedt, writ- ing in 184T, after spending seven years in Russia and the Caucasus, in telling of the ' Atesch-gah,' speaks of the Hindu god Vishnu Q Wischnu ') and of the ritual summons with the ' Tritonmuschel,' and looks upon the idolatrous worship and barbarous self -mortification of the body as if it were a deca-

��1 See Reineggs, Allgemeine Be- feature in the whole description is the schreibung des Kaukasus, ed. F. E. employment of the old name ' Atesch- Schroder, 1. 159, Gotha, 1796. gah ♦ (fire-temple) and the allusion

2 Morier, Second Journey through (p. 181) to the hatred manifested Persia, 2. 243, London, 1818. towards mice, frogs, lizards, and

8 See Eichwald, Beise auf den Cas- snakes, 'als Kinder des bosen Geistes,'

pischen Metre und in den Caucasus, although this information may have

1. 176-183, 189, 216-217, Stuttgart, been derived from some other source,

1834. The only possible Zoroastrian and applied in this connection.

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