Wiktionary
n. Open-topped tower where Parsees place their dead.
Wikipedia
A Tower of Silence is a circular, raised structure built by Zoroastrians for excarnation – that is, for dead bodies to be exposed to carrion birds.
Zoroastrian exposure of the dead is first attested in the mid-5th century BCE Histories of Herodotus, but the use of towers is first documented in the early 9th century. The doctrinal rationale for exposure is to avoid contact with earth or fire, both of which are considered sacred.
One of the earliest literary descriptions of such a building appears in the late 9th-century Epistles of Manushchihr, where the technical term is astodan, "ossuary". Another technical term that appears in the 9th/10th-century texts of Zoroastrian tradition (the so-called Pahlavi books) is dakhmag, for any place for the dead. This Zoroastrian Middle Persian term is a borrowing from Avestan dakhma, of uncertain meaning but related to interment and commonly translated as "grave". In the Avesta, the term is pejorative and does not signify a construction of any kind. In the Iranian provinces of Yazd and Kerman, dakhma continues as deme or dema. Yet another term that appears in the 9th/10th-century texts is dagdah, "prescribed place". The word also appears in later Zoroastrian texts of both India and Iran, but in 20th-century India came to signify the lowest grade of temple fire. In India the term doongerwadi came into use after a tower of silence was constructed on a hill of that name.
The English language term "Tower of Silence" is a neologism attributed to Robert Murphy, a translator for the British colonial government of India in the early 19th century.
A Tower of Silence, or Dakhma, is a Zoroastrian structure used for exposure of the dead.
Tower of Silence may also refer to:
- The Tower of Silence (film), a 1924 German film directed by Johannes Guter
- The Tower of Silence (album), a 2012 album by Steve Adey
- The Tower of Silence (novel), a 2013 novel by Phiroshaw Jamsetjee Chevalier
- The Towers of Silence, a 1971 novel by Paul Scott
Usage examples of "tower of silence".
We captured him and sent him to the emperor for a cage in his garden, though if I had had my way he would have died in the topmost cell of the Tower of Silence.
He thought that he could see a thin cloud of vultures circling above the Tower of Silence, waiting for the bodies of the Parsee faithful, but when he looked away, the specks continued to circle in the periphery of his vision.
Years ago Amrita had described to me the Tower of Silence in a Bombay park, above which circle the vultures in patient spirals.