Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/120

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

that the ministrant was a Hindu. His own words, in fact, state this when he appends : ' The present inhabitants were only two in number, both from India, one being a native of Calcutta, the other of Delhi. . . . They wore the usual Indian dress and turban, having in addition a streak of yellow paint on the forehead between the eyes.' These priests are pictured in the colored frontispiece to his book as engaged in performing their ritual on the pedestal of stone and mortar which is near the central shrine, and which, like it, is repre- sented as lighted up with natural gas ; their type is thoroughly Indian, and the ceremonies which are described are Brahmanical, not Zoroastrian.

Ten years later than Ussher, the German Baron Thielmann visited the fire-temple in October, 1872. ^ He calls it by the same name, ' Ateschgah,' and says (p. 10) : ' The priest is sent here for a limited time by the Parsee community of Bombay ; ^ after a lapse of some years he is replaced. Now and then a pilgrim from the end of Persia (Yazd, Kerman) or from India makes his appearance and remains for several months or years at the sacred place.' Proceeding on this assumption, the baron supposed that the worship was that offered to Ahura Mazda, or Ormazd ; but it is manifest that the ritual which he witnessed and briefly described, especially the finale of ' a votive offering of sugar-candy made to an idol on the altar,' was wholly Hindu, never Parsi. Thielmann's further testimony (gathered through

1 Thielmann, Journey in the Cau- Caucase, p. 141, Paris, 1885) states casus, Eng. tr. by Heneage, 2. 9-12, that after the chief priest was assassi- London, 1875. Mounsey (Journey nated in 1864 the Parsis of Bombay through the Caucasus^ p. 329, London, sent another, who was gradually for- 1872), who was in Baku July 18-19, gotten and withdrew in 1880, although 1871, writes of the temple as if of the latter date is about correct; cf. Zoroastrian origin, but speaks equally pp. 54, 66, below. Orsolle presumes of the priest as a' Dei-vish from Delhi.' throughout (pp. 140-141) that the

2 I have not been able to find any temple was Zoroastrian, and refers to record of such missions in Patell'sParsi the profanation of the sacred fire in Prakash, Bombay, 1888. Nor do I burning the bodies of the priests that know on what authority Orsolle (Le died in service.

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