17. Previous exposure of the dead, and migration of souls.
Some of these customs are peculiar and interesting. It has been seen that for three days the home is impure, and no food is cooked in it except what is given to dogs; and since on the third day offerings are made on the spot where the body lay, it seems to be supposed that the dead man’s spirit is still there. On the fourth day is the funeral feast, in which all relations and friends join, and after this the house becomes pure, it being presumably held that the dead man’s spirit has taken its departure. For these three days food is cooked in the house and given to dogs, and immediately after the man is dead a dog is brought in to look at his face. It has been suggested that the manner of laying out the body recalls the time when it was simply exposed. But when it was exposed the body would have been devoured principally by dogs and vultures, and the customs connected with dogs seem to arise from this. The cooked food given to dogs for three days is perhaps a substitute for the flesh of the dead man which they would have eaten, and the display of the body to a dog is in substitution for its being devoured by these animals, who now that it is exposed in a tower of silence no longer have access to it. It has further been seen how during the marriage rites, after an invitation has been issued to the ancestors to attend, a woman comes in barking like a dog. The other women drive her away and laughingly eat everything they can lay their hands on, perhaps in imitation of the way dogs devour their food. This custom seems to indicate that the Pārsis formerly believed that the spirits of their ancestors went into the dogs which devoured their bodies, a belief which would be quite natural to primitive people. Such a hypothesis would explain the peculiar customs mentioned, and also the great sanctity which the Pārsis attach to dogs. On the same analogy they should apparently also have believed that the spirits of ancestors went into vultures; but it is not recorded that they show any special veneration for these birds, though it must be almost certain that they do not kill them. The explanation given for the custom of the exposure of the dead is that none of the holy elements, earth, fire or water, can be polluted by receiving dead bodies. But, as already stated, towers of silence cannot be a primitive institution, and the bodies in all probability were previously exposed on the ground. The custom of exposure probably dates from a period prior to the belief in the extreme sanctity of the earth. It may have been retained in order that the spirits of ancestors might find a fresh home in the animals which devoured their bodies; and some platform, from which the towers of silence subsequently developed, may have been made to avoid defilement of the earth; while in after times this necessity of not defiling the earth and other elements might be advanced as a reason justifying the custom of exposure.