Place · Parsi fire temple · India
Wadiaji Atash Behram, Mumbai
Also known as Atash Behram, Atash Behram (Wadiaji), Mumbai, Wadiaji Atash Behram
The Wadiaji Atash Behram at Fort Mumbai, Maharashtra — one of only eight Atash Behrams (highest-grade Parsi sacred fires) in the world, consecrated on 17 October 1830 by Hormusji Wadia and the Bombay Parsi community. The Atash Behram's sacred fire was consecrated through the Nirangdin ceremony (the most elaborate Parsi fire-consecration ritual, taking 11 days with 16 priests). The Wadiaji Atash Behram is one of three Atash Behrams in Mumbai (with Anjuman Atash Behram, 1897, and Dadyseth Atash Behram, 1783) and the second-oldest. The sacred fire has burned uninterrupted for 194+ years as of 2024. The temple structure (restored 2007 by the Parzor Foundation and the J.N. Petit Institute) is a Palladian neoclassical building, uncommon for a Parsi fire temple. Non-Parsis are strictly barred from entering the inner shrine where the Atash Behram burns.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.946, 72.836
Connections (2)
- Craft tradition ofChhatrapati Shivaji Terminus
The Wadias came from Surat to Bombay in 1736 to run the East India Company's dockyard and built some three hundred and fifty ships in Malabar teak, including several Royal Navy vessels and HMS Trincomalee, still afloat today. The same family's money built the Ātash Behrām, and Parsi philanthropy paid for a large part of the Gothic and Deco city around it.
- Site withinMumbai
Wadiaji Atash Behram, Mumbai sits inside Mumbai and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Atash Behram”. Parsi Panchayat records; John Hinnells, The Zoroastrian Diaspora.
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