Nine White Marble Graves for Mazda

In Division 89 of Père-Lachaise, a white marble stele bears a motif a visitor would not expect to find in a Paris cemetery: a winged high priest, carved in the style of ancient Babylon, wings spread above a sacred flame. This is the grave of a Parsi — a follower of Mazda, the god of light in the Zoroastrian faith, a religion founded by Zoroaster in Persia more than 2,500 years ago and still practised today by a small community in Bombay. Père-Lachaise holds nine Parsi graves, all in white marble, concentrated in Divisions 89 and 93. No other Paris cemetery holds such a group.

The Parsis are descendants of Zoroastrians who left Persia in the eighth century to settle in India, chiefly in Bombay. From the 1920s onward, Parsi figures who died in Europe found a resting place at Père-Lachaise. The R. D. Tata family, the famous dynasty of Indian industrialists, holds a tomb in Division 89, at the corner of the avenue circulaire and the avenue Aguado. Jehangir R. D. Tata, who died in 1993, is the best-known member of the family: in July 2004, India's ambassador to France presided over a tribute ceremony at Père-Lachaise marking the centenary of Jehangir Tata's birth. The tomb of Patel Behram Pestonji, a young Parsi who died in 1931 at the age of 28, also lies on the edge of Division 89.

On the white marble steles: a Babylonian archer, a winged high priest, a sacred flame. The epitaphs mix English and Persian: “To us let it be as Thou shalt will.”

The nine Parsi graves at Père-Lachaise are marked by three things: the white marble, the Babylonian-style motifs, and the inscriptions. The stelae bear Persian archers, winged high priests — the Fravashi, a symbol of the soul — and eternal flames, recalling the sacred fire that Parsis keep burning in their temples. The epitaphs are in English, sometimes accompanied by quotations from Zoroaster or universalist maxims. One stele reads: “The world is my country, one touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” Another reads: “Résister à la tyrannie, c'est obéir à Dieu” (“To resist tyranny is to obey God”) — a French phrase, carved by Indians, on a Persian grave, in a Paris cemetery. Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world.

A visitor who ventures as far as Divisions 89 and 93 of Père-Lachaise — the Charonne plateau, the sector furthest from the main entrance — finds a funerary ensemble with no equal in Paris. The nine white marble Parsi stelae stand out against the grey limestone and black granite of the surrounding graves. The Babylonian symbols — archers, winged priests, flames — tell of a religion born in Persia 25 centuries ago, exiled to India, and carried to Paris along the routes of trade and diplomacy. Père-Lachaise is a Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox, Buddhist cemetery — and a Zoroastrian one. Nine white marble graves are enough to make the largest cemetery in Paris a crossroads of the world's religions.