Rustam over the royal tomb shows an altar with fire on it. Herodotus, the earliest of the Greek writers on Persia, however, informs us that the Persians did not erect temples in his days, but sacrificed unto the elements sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and wind on the summits of mountains.[1] Dino, the contemporary of Alexander, does not mention the fire-temples and says that the Persians worshipped in the open air.[2] It may be that the early writers did not come across temples in Iran, in the Greek sense of the term. But there must certainly have been some kind of structures to protect the sacred fire from being extinguished. Strabo[3] for the first time mentions in Cappadocia places dedicated to fire, and speaks of enclosures with fire altars in the centre. No sacrifices, we are told, were offered to any divinity without the accompaniment of the invocation of fire. These altars, we are further informed by Strabo, were filled with ashes over which the sacred fire burned day and night. The Magi, he adds, tended the holy flames, and with Baresman twigs in their hands daily performed their devotions for about an hour.[4] Pausanias (a.d. 173) corroborates this statement from his personal observation in Lydia.[5] Xenophon and Curtius Rufus acquaint us with the practice of carrying fire on portable altars in religious processions.[6]
Atar is both the genius of fire and the element fire itself. As the fire dwells in every house, he is constantly spoken of in the Rig Veda as the lord of the house. The Yasna in the same manner calls him the lord of all houses.[7] He is the great Yazata.[8] He is the most bountiful,[9] of renowned name,[10] the beneficent warrior, and full of glory and healing.[11] Besides being the angel that presides over fire, Atar is also fire as such. The two concepts are often so mixed up together that it becomes difficult to distinguish between the blazing fire burning upon the
- ↑ Herod. 1. 131.
- ↑ Cited by Clemens Alexandrinus, Proptreptica, 5. 65. 1.
- ↑ 60 b.c.
- ↑ Strabo, p. 733.
- ↑ Pausanias, 5. 27. 5, 6.
- ↑ Cyropaedia, 8. 3. 11–13; History of Alexander 3. 3. 9; see Edwards, Altar (Persian) in ERE. 1. 346-348.
- ↑ Ys. 17. 11.
- ↑ Ny. 5. 4.
- ↑ Ys. 1. 2.
- ↑ Vsp. 9. 5.
- ↑ Ny. 5. 6; Sr. 1. 9; 2. 9.
