Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A raised circular structure used in Zoroastrian funerary practice as a site on which corpses are exposed to be eaten by vultures.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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The first corpse brought to a new tower -- "dakhma" -- must be the body of the innocent child of a mobed or priest.
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The "towers of silence" or "dakhma", where Parsis place their dead, is in the Malabar Hill in Mumbai, the neighbourhood near the sea, which is home to film stars, politicians and stock brokers.
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Another proposal, backed by environmentalists and traditionalists alike, was for a huge aviary around the dakhma where vultures could be bred.
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After a last prayer at the gate of the dakhma, pronounced from afar by the mobed, and re-peated in chorus by the nassesalars, the dog ceremony is repeated.
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If any one, who has once been carried thither, should happen to regain consciousness, the nassesalars are bound to kill him; for such a person, who has been polluted by one touch of the dead bodies in the dakhma, has thereby lost all right to return to the living, by doing so he would contaminate the whole community.
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As soon as the ceremony was over, we were led into another building, where a model of the dakhma was to be seen.
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While the dog was staring into the dead woman's face, we were gazing, as intently, but with much more disgust, at the huge flock of vultures above the dakhma, that kept entering the tower, and flying out again with pieces of human flesh in their beaks.
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As some such cases have occurred, the Parsees are trying to get a new law passed, that would allow the miserable ex-corpses to live again amongst their friends, and that would compel the nassesalars to leave the only gate of the dakhma unlocked, so that they might find a way of retreat open to them.
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Having deposited it in an iron coffin -- the same for everyone -- they carry it to the dakhma.
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