CHAPTER XXXIII
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES
The Parsi Towers of Silence
Our company had divided and respectively gone where all bad actors and where all good actors go,—to Australia and to London.
We lingered on in India for a few months. We were going through the cantonments of the Punjab before we sailed for home. We had engaged two other professionals and had made out programmes that reminded me of our Canton Recital. My husband had me down for a recitation in almost every programme; but when the time came I very rarely did recite.
We were in Bombay for some weeks before we started on our little final tour.
It was in Bombay, on a bright Sabbath day, that I first saw a Tower of Silence. We drove from the sunny Apollo Bundar, through the cool, green park, past the statue of the Queen—the most beautiful statue of Queen Victoria that has ever been executed.
I must own that I felt a little frightened. I had heard so much from Anglo-Indians about the horrors of the Parsi method of entombment that, in spite of my, perhaps, morbid desire to see and understand all the characteristic phases of Eastern life, I was almost nervous as we drove to the outer gate of the beautiful gardens that enclose the last resting-place of the Parsis who die in Bombay.
The dokhma—to give the correct name to the round Parsi sepulchres, that we, in our easy Anglo-Indian fashion call Towers of Silence—the dokhma is always placed on high ground. The sanitary reasons for this are obvious. In Bombay there are three Towers. They were built at different periods and mark the increase in Bombay of Parsi affluence, and of Parsi numbers. The oldest and smallest was built soon after the followers of Zoroaster had fled from Persia to Ind.
These Parsi mortuaries were in every way different from what I had imagined them; but, after seeing what they really are, my utmost philosophy revolts and sickens at the thought of the poor dead body, torn, as it is, by the claws and beaks of the human-flesh-fed vultures. But that the Parsi disposition of the dead is anything but healthy, I dispute; and the surroundings and situation of the Bombay dokhmas are dignified and beautiful in the extreme. When our carriage stopped we walked up a gradual rise, gravel-paved and tree edged, to a vine-covered lodge. Here we were eagerly seized upon by one of the half-dozen gatekeepers, who are glad to act as guides to curious strangers. We went on and up, passing groups of graceful, luxuriant trees, and beds of brilliant, ill-assorted flowers. Our guide took us into a little house, in which is kept a model of the dokhma. From this you learn what the inner construction of every Parsi dokhma is; for into no dokhma are you allowed to look. On the bottom of the Tower is a thick flooring of lime. A few feet above is the grating upon which the bodies are laid. This grating is divided into three tiers; not above each other, but inside each other. Each tier is divided into the same number of sections. These sections are formed by iron rays that spring from the centre of the Tower to its outer circumference or wall; hence, the compartments of the inner tier are smaller than those of the centre tier, those of the centre tier smaller than those of the outer. The outer tier is reserved for the bodies of men, the inner tier for the bodies of children, and on the centre tier the swooping vultures find the bodies of the Parsi women.
Only the attendants of the dokhma are allowed to enter it with the dead. They pass quickly up a narrow aisle that runs from the doorway, and place the dead upon the appointed place; they tear the sheets rapidly from the body; for the vultures are waiting, and they do not wait tamely. Only one article is left upon the corpse: the kusti. The attendants hurry away, and the vultures, with horrid cries, rush down upon their prey.
The kusti is one of the two badges of the followers of Zoroaster. It is a woollen cord, and is hollow. Only the women of the priest caste are allowed to weave it. It must be woven of seventy-two threads and be about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter. It is first woven as a continuous cord, and has, of course, no ends. About a foot of the warp is left unwoven; then it is passed on to a priest. He cuts the unwoven bit in the centre. This makes two ends of loose threads. These he braids to within an inch of their extremities; then he divides each braid into three little braids. All the time he repeats prescribed prayers in Zend, not one word of which he understands. The Parsi prayers are handed down from generation to generation, learned mechanically, and it is very exceptional for even a high priest to understand them.
The kusti is tied loosely about the waist, early in the Parsi life—at or before puberty, I believe. It denotes chastity, which is the chief requirement of the Parsi religion. The kusti is the last garment to leave the Parsi’s body. It is torn off by the devouring vultures.
The vultures are kept and bred, by the attendants of the dokhmas, for the purpose of cleaning the flesh from off the bones of the Parsi dead. They are only a few hours, at the longest, in executing their gruesome task. The dokhma is roofless. When the rain falls, it washes the dust of the crumbling bones down to the lime flooring. From there it gradually drains away, and is absorbed again into the economy of nature, in a way absolutely harmless to the living.
A few yards from the Tower of Silence is a white stone. It is kept clean, and shines up from the green grass. Nearer the dokhma than this stone no one may go, save the dead and the professional attendants. It is the Stone of Parting, the Stone of Good-bye, of Everlasting Farewell. Beyond it, the dead must go from those who have loved him, those he has loved; go alone, into the place of death, and into the something after death, which, in Parsi usage, seems to us worse than death itself.
I stood by that white stone one day, with one of the most remarkable men in the East—a Parsi. The birds shrieked angrily as they sat upon the towers. The old attendant said stoically, “We have had no funeral since early yesterday, they are getting——” I drew back that I might not hear the horrid end of his sentence. Then I said to my companion—a liberal-minded man, with whom we had often discussed involved social issues—“Do you not dislike it?”—“No,” was his reply, “my wife was laid there twenty years ago; and I shall lie there in a few years. It is our Parsi custom.”
When a Parsi dies, the body is at once washed, clothed in garments that are clean, white, and old, carried into a room on the lowest floor of the house, and laid on slabs of stone. An iron bier is brought in. The Parsi women sit on carpets, near the dead. The Parsi men sit, in long rows, on benches, outside the house. The priests recite prayers. After they have recited the first seven chapters of the Izashne (a Parsi religious book) the dead is placed upon the bier. Then a dog is brought in and made to look at the body! Then the prayers are continued. The body is carried from the house amid gesticulations of deep respect. A procession is formed and the remains are followed to the dokhma by relatives, friends, and professional attendants, all dressed in old, clean, white clothes. Prayers are again recited at the “Good-bye Stone,” and while the body is being placed in the Tower.
On the third day after the death, all the friends of the dead gather, in the afternoon, at the house of the nearest surviving relative. From thence they go to the Fire Temple, where a commemorative service is held. These services recur at stated intervals; and at the end of the Parsi year are several holidays, sacred to the dead.
I have mentioned the Fire Temple; but the Parsis are not fire worshippers, though it is a common error to call them so.
One of the most eminent of modern Parsis has explained so well the exact attitude concerning the introduction of fire in the religious observances of the devout Parsi, that I quote from him.
“The Parsis are called by others ‘Fire Worshippers,’ and they defend themselves by saying that they do not worship the fire, but regard it and other great natural phenomena and objects as emblems of the divine power. To me it appears that the imputation, on the one hand, is wrong; and the defence, on the other hand, a little over-shot. Though the Parsi ‘remembers, praises, loves, or regards holy’ whatever is beautiful, or wonderful, or harmless, or useful in Nature, he never asks from an unintelligent material object assistance or benefit; he is, therefore, no idolater or worshipper of matter. On the other hand, when the Parsi addresses his prayers to Hormuzd, or God, he never thinks it at all necessary that he should turn his face to any particular object. He would say, and does say, his ‘Hormuzd yasht’ (prayer to Hormuzd) anywhere whatever, without the slightest misgiving. Again, when he addresses the angel of water, or any other but that of fire, he does not stand before the fire. It is only when he addresses the angel of fire that he turns his face to the fire. In short, in addressing any particular angel, he turns his face to the object of that angel’s guardianship as his emblem; but, in his prayers to Hormuzd, he recognises or uses, or turns his face to, no emblems whatever. Since fire only could be brought within the limits of the temple—any of the grand objects of nature (as the sea, the sun, etc.) being unavailable for this purpose—the temples naturally became the sanctuaries of fire alone, and hence has arisen the mistake of the Parsis being regarded as ‘Fire Worshippers.’ ”
This is precisely what I was told by every intelligent Parsi with whom I spoke on the subject; but very few of them expressed it so clearly and ably.
I was asked, in Bombay, to follow a little Parsi baby to the dokhma. I intended doing so—not out of curiosity—but out of sympathy and liking for its mother. I even started; but before we were half-way there I turned back. I thought of that little white stone where the white-robed procession must stop, beyond which the mother might not go. The vultures sometimes scream when the halt is made at the “Farewell Stone.” I could not go. I could not see that little baby’s body carried to the hungry birds, in the presence of the pale, pretty, little Parsi woman, upon whose breast I had seen it the week before.
God help any mother when she parts with her dead child! But I think the glad shrieks of those swooping beast-birds must be even harder to bear than the first fall of the earth on the coffin lid.
Asia is the graveyard of countless millions. Asia is the home of many, many distinct races, all of which have different burial customs. All are more or less interesting.
The Parsis, who rank above most of the Oriental peoples in civilisation, dispose of their dead in the most repulsive manner of any race in Asia. But they break no sanitary law when they throw their dead to the merciless vultures.
The Hindoo disposal of the dead is, more than that of any other Eastern people, save the Burmese, in entire consonance with the health of Asia’s living millions.
The Burmese also practise cremation, and are, therefore, as much as the Hindoos, the guardians of public health. It is the Burmese who most hate death, and who mourn longest for their dead.
The Chinese are, in their funeral rites, the most fantastic, the noisiest, and the most callous. Their custom of keeping the dead unburied for long years, and their mode of interment, which is usually above ground, are a positive menace, not alone to their own health and the health of the stranger within their gates, but also to the health of all Asia.
The Japanese, who are Past Masters of the difficult art of living gracefully, pleasantly, satisfactorily, and with dignity, meet death with more self-control than any of their fellow Asiatics. There is nothing in their funeral customs to offend the most fastidious European or the most prejudiced American. Their cemeteries, if we are to have cemeteries at all, might well be models for the civilised world—models of peaceful, quiet beauty, ideal resting-places surrounded by the everlasting hills, which lift their high, hopeful heads as if in promise of immortality—places full of flowers that live so brightly and die so sweetly that they whisper with their gentle, perfumed lips the only one consolation for death—if death be eternal.
The Cingalese, the Sikhs, the Mohammedans, deserve mention in this little series; but then so do a score of others. May they all rest in peace, the simple native folk, and know no trouble, feel no pain, in that strange land from which is sent us no Book of Travels, and not even a newspaper letter—“The undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns!”