So Few That Each One Has a Name

There are very few Atash Behrams in service anywhere, eight of them in India and one in Iran, which is a small number for a religion with a continuous history of some three thousand years. The reason is the cost of consecration and the requirement that the fire then be maintained without interruption for as long as it exists, which commits a community permanently. Individual fires are therefore known by name and by their history, and a Zoroastrian can say which one they are speaking about the way a Catholic might name a particular basilica. Access to the chamber where the fire burns is restricted to Zoroastrians, and the atlas records that restriction as the community's own rule rather than describing what happens inside.

John Hinnells's study of the Zoroastrian diaspora identifies the problem this creates for a scattered community. Zoroastrians now live in substantial numbers in countries with no consecrated fire of the highest grade, and the demographic decline of the community, together with disputes about who counts as a Zoroastrian, bears directly on whether the existing fires can be maintained. The atlas records the question as live and as one for the community rather than for outside observers to settle.