A large majority of the inhabitants, principally in the trading community, are Parsees, a most thrifty, intelligent race, in whose hands the commerce, banking, &c., are placed.
This being one of the great Parsee centres, these people have their temples, and what they term the “Tower of Silence,” which is the place where the Parsees dispose of their dead. Unlike both Christians, Buddhists, and Mahomedans, they avoid burial, cremation, or committing the dead to the sacred waters of the Ganges.
This Tower of Silence is a structure standing over a deep vault, the summit being an iron grating, upon which the body is deposited high up in the air. The birds of prey which flock around this charnel house soon dispose of the flesh, leaving the bones, when decayed, to fall through the grating into the fosse at the foot of the tower.
There is something terrible in the idea of one’s body being handed over as food for loathsome condors, hawks, and crows, but this is intensified when such things happen as that which occurred whilst I was in Bombay. Madame Follet, the wife of the French Consul in Bombay, was driving home in her open carriage, and when passing near this Tower of Silence, an ærial fight was raging between several birds, for what appeared to be some particular “tit-bit,” the holder of which dropped the object in the carriage. Horrible to say—it was the forearm and small hand of an infant!
I think, after all, that cremation is preferable to this mode of disposing of the dead.
In Bombay, like in other Indian cities, the people do not seem to take much heed of either cholera or smallpox. On one occasion, whilst strolling through the bazaar, I came across a gathering of natives. In forcing my way amongst the crowd, I saw a man writhing in pain on the footpath. Several natives were busily engaged rubbing him with great force, whilst others were holding him tightly round both hands and feet. On inquiry, I was informed that the poor wretch had been seized with cholera, and that while his friends had gone for a palanquin, he was being rubbed to keep up the circulation. I need not say that I made a bee line for my hotel, and inasmuch as several of my children were suffering from attacks of ague and jungle fever, I thought it prudent to expedite our departure from Bombay. I accordingly hastened my arrangements, and within a week we were once more on the “briny,” comfortably settled on board the good ship Parramatta, on our way to Australia.
