The Drive To Malabar Hill

The Drive To Malabar Hill.

Public Building, Bombay

Public Building, Bombay.

One of the most interesting objects in Bombay, connected with the Parsees, is the place in which they leave their dead. Nothing offends the senses in the Parsee cemetery. Its situation is delightful. It occupies the summit of a hill in the most beautiful suburb of Bombay, and overlooks the calm Arabian Sea. On entering it, we first saw only a spacious well-kept garden, where blossoms filled the air with perfume. Amid these beautiful surroundings is a modest edifice where is preserved the Sacred Fire.

Passing by this, we per-ceived five circular structures, which we knew to be the celebrated "Towers of Silence." In view of the great wealth of the Parsees in Bombay, I had expected in these buildings something elegant or imposing. But here, as in their temples, everything is plain. In each case, only a curving wall was visible, twenty-five feet in height and ninety in diameter, covered with white cement and smooth as porcelain. The only decoration each possessed was seen along its rounded parapet, and even that was frequently disturbed. For all the figures there, so motionless and statuesque, were not in stone or bronze. They were alive, - a row of vultures waiting for their prey!

After about an hour's time, we saw a funeral procession approach. The body was conveyed by venerable priests, arrayed in pure white robes. Slowly they bore their burden through flower-bordered paths toward one of the abodes of silence. There was no pageant ordisplay. None is perm it ted here. Within this area, rich and poor, noble and serf, mingle alike in absolute equality. Death is the only king who must be recognized. After some prayers had been recited, the mourners turned sadly away. When they had disappeared, the priests again took up the body, and, at the sight, the keen-eyed vultures left their perch and circled slowly through the air.

In The Parsee Cemetery

In The Parsee Cemetery.

Within the circular wall of each of the towers, near the top, is an iron grating. On this the lifeless form is reverently laid. Then, with averted face, the chief priest draws away the pure white bur-ial-robe and passes from the scene. At once the air is darkened by a hun-dred birds, swooping down to the grim feast before them. In fifteen minutes only the bones are left. These soon fall through the grating to a crypt below which is entirely open to the sun and sky. Horrible, do we say? It certainly seems so, and yet ideas in this respect are largely matters of education; and the intelligent Parsee thinks that burial in the earth or sea is far more dreadful in its consequences than to consign the body at once to the birds of the air.

A Tower Of Silence

A Tower Of Silence.

Waiting For Their Prey

Waiting For Their Prey.

One of the most extraordinary features of Bombay is its hospital for animals. Here, in a large and fairly well-kept area, we saw a multitude of emaciated horses; diseased cows; mangy dogs, apparently howling for liberty or death; hair-less cats; dyspeptic looking monkeys; lame sheep; broken-winged birds; and even certain insects and reptiles - all of which here find shelter, food, water, and attention, till they recover or die. Both Hinduism and Buddhism strenuously inculcate kindness to animals, and the result is to make one-half of the human race vegetarian from principle, and merciful toward all dumb creatures. It is a question, however, whether it would not be better to put sick animals out of misery at once; but to the believer in the transmigration of souls, such conduct would seem little less than murder. In contrast to the cruelties inflicted upon beasts of burden in the Occident, the Buddhist way of treating "our dumb friends" is surely a rebuke to Christian nations. Like many religious tenets, however, this has been carried to an absurd extreme. Thus, millions in India will not even kill the parasites which infest their bodies, but will remove them carefully and lay them to one side, as if to say: "Please try another pasture for a while; I need a little rest." There can be no doubt also that this extreme respect for animal life has enabled tigers, wolves, and venomous snakes to multiply in India, till they together cause a terrible mortality annually.