When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

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.