[HN Gopher] Atash Behram - Types of Fire
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Atash Behram - Types of Fire
Author : kreyenborgi
Score : 91 points
Date : 2024-06-04 07:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| KhoomeiK wrote:
| Vedic Hinduism had a similar concept of eternal fire. I recently
| wrote up a twitter thread [1] explaining how the modern
| interpretation of Vedic instructions on starting these sacred
| fires misunderstands the text.
|
| Etymology tidbit: "Bharata", India's Sanskrit name, refers to the
| forerunner clan that established India's first historically
| recorded political entity--the Kuru Kingdom--around 1200 BC near
| modern Delhi. The clan itself was named "Bharata" due to their
| ardent _bearing_ ( "bhar-" in Sanskrit) of the sacred fire.
|
| [1] https://x.com/khoomeik/status/1794082465398812770
| rendall wrote:
| That was an amazing read. So, what is likely to happen now?
| Does your discovery become canon? If so, is it a slow process?
| There won't be a schism of some kind over this, will there?
| KhoomeiK wrote:
| Thanks! I have no idea--unfortunately, very few Hindus
| maintain the Vedic fire rites. There are also no active
| central authorities on matters of Vedic ritual. The only plan
| of now is to use this interpretation in my own yajna
| practice.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Is it possible to read this writeup somewhere else? I am
| curious, but Twitter only shows the first couple of sentences.
| KhoomeiK wrote:
| Just unrolled the thread for you here!
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1794082465398812770.html
| marssaxman wrote:
| Thank you!
| rendall wrote:
| This is fascinating. I had no idea there could be different
| grades of fire.
|
| Does anyone know the theological basis for the different numbers
| of purification rituals for each fire? For instance, why is the
| potter's fire purified 61 times?
| behnamoh wrote:
| Man, looking at the architecture of those buildings, there's
| something magnificent about ancient Persia.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Post Islamic Iran also has stunning architecture. The mosques
| are breathtaking.
| foobarian wrote:
| It's too bad we don't build this kind of thing any more.
| Imagine what kind of pyramid we could build with modern
| technology!
| marssaxman wrote:
| It exists, and I've been there:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Pyramid
| behnamoh wrote:
| True, the Isfahan mosque ceiling is mesmerizing: https://www.
| google.com/search?q=isfahan+mosque+ceiling&sca_e...
| unwind wrote:
| To me (as a non-believer) this is like a fascinating combination
| of the Ship of Theseus [1] and a little homeopathy [2], but with
| _fire_! Wow, very interesting, thanks for sharing.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Is there any game which implemented this ritual? Could imagine
| some Minecraft creator would do this.
| doug-moen wrote:
| When our distant ancestors first started using fire as a
| technology, they would have initially been using naturally
| occurring fire, probably from lightning strikes (unless the tribe
| lived near an active volcano).
|
| The opportunity to harvest natural fire from lightning doesn't
| occur very often, so it was necessary to maintain an eternal
| fire. This was a very important job, passed down from one
| generation to the next, so of course it would become ritualized,
| and stories and myths about the importance of the job would be
| created. Myths and rituals are how you conserve and propagate
| culture in a pre-literate society. Actually, the first tribe to
| do this was probably before the invention of modern language, so
| who knows what this would have actually looked like. Are there
| myths in a pre-oral culture? There are other modalities of
| thought and communication other than modern oral language, so
| maybe!
|
| We know from the archeological record that the rate of tech
| progress in stone tools was extremely, almost incomprehensibly
| slow during the earliest stone ages. Likewise, it's probable that
| many long generations passed from the creation of firekeeping
| rituals (the eternal fire) to the discovery of techniques for
| making fire on demand.
|
| My guess is that the eternal fire has ancient roots, was strongly
| culturally conserved, and re-invented multiple times.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| > _The sacred fire at Udvada Atash Behram, for example, kindled
| in 721 CE in Sanjan, burns continually to this day, now in Udvada
| since 1741, and housed in a magnificent Persian style temple
| building since 1742._
|
| That it some impressive cultural feat. It combines the human
| ability to take on the extraordinarily long term view [0] -
| planning ahead - (our prefrontal cortex is only fully developed
| at 25 years of age) and the _control of fire_ which goes back at
| least 1 million (!) years [1].
|
| Some of the Proto-Indo-Europeans [2] seemed to be very keen at
| ritualizing the control of fire which can be attested through
| various examples in Indo-European practices [3].
|
| If one traces back the Indo-European origin of the word _fire_
| there are 2 main terms:
|
| (1) *h1ngwnis
|
| (2) *peh2wr
|
| The first one refers to the animate feature of fire (e.g. as
| "Spirit"/"God", "active") while the second one to the inanimate
| ("substance", "passive") [4], interestingly Proto-Indo-European
| is thought to have _animacy_ gender as a distinct grammatical
| feature [5] which was later replaced by the masculine /feminine
| gender.
|
| The germanic root for _fire_ comes from the inanimate one while
| the Persian _atash_ , the latin _ignis_ or _Agni_ (Vedic deity of
| fire) from the animate form.
|
| [0]https://longnow.org/ideas/the-fire-that-never-goes-out/
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_hum..
| .
|
| [2]https://www.science.org/content/article/new-language-
| databas...
|
| [3]https://books.google.at/books?id=cI-bEAAAQBAJ
|
| [4]https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-
| Indo-E...
|
| [5]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animacy
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