When a Parsee dies, the body is dressed in clean, but old clothes, and conveyed to its last resting-place on an iron bier; meat and drink are placed at hand for three days, as during that time the soul is supposed to hover around in the hope of being reunited to its late earthly tenement.
A PARSEE.
The Parsee sepulchres are of so peculiar a character as to merit particular notice. Should any of my readers ever go to Bombay, he will find two of these dakhmas, or Temples of Silence, in a secluded part of Malabar Hill, though admittance is denied within the walls enclosing the melancholy structures to aught but Parsees. The interior is fitted up with stages or stories of stone pavement, slanting down to a circular opening, like a well, covered with a grating, into which the bones are swept, after the fowls of the air, the dew, and the sun have deprived them of every particle of flesh.
The Parsees assign as their reason for not burying their dead, that, having received many benefits from the earth during their lifetime, they consider it defiled by placing dead bodies in it. Similarly, they do not adopt the Hindoo custom of burning their dead, as another element, fire, would be rendered impure.
The chief distinctive feature of the Parsee dress is the hat, to which the community cling with a pertinacity that would be extraordinary, were it not common. Even the Parsee representative of “Young Bombay,” dressed from top to toe in European costume, including a pair of shiny boots, cannot be induced to discard the abominable topee, or hat, distinctive of his race; though, perhaps, after all, we who live in glass houses should not throw stones; for what can be more hideous than the chimney-pot hat of our boasted civilization? The Parsee head-dress, which contests the palm of ugliness with its English rival, is constructed on a strong but light framework, covered with highly-glazed, dark-colored chintz. The priests, who dress like the laity, wear a hat of much the same shape as the former, but white, instead of a dark color.
On occasions of ceremony, the ordinary tight-fitting narrow garment is exchanged for one with very full skirts, like a petticoat; and a shawl is usually worn round the waist, which is at other times omitted. The costume of the women is a combination of that of the Hindoos and Mussulmans, consisting of the short body and sarree of the former, with the full trousers of the latter. Both sexes endue themselves, at seven years of age, with the sacred shirt, which is worn over the trousers; the sadra, as it is called, is made of a thin, transparent muslin, and is meant to represent the coat-of-mail the men wore when they arrived in India, and with which they believe they can resist the spiritual assaults of Ahriman, the evil principle. The hair of the women is concealed by linen skull-caps, fitting tight to the head.
It is a singular and interesting sight to watch the Parsees assembled on the sea-shore, and, as the sun sinks below the horizon, to mark them prostrating themselves, and offering up their orisons to the great giver of light and heat, which they regard as representing the Deity. Their prayers are uttered, it is said, in an unknown tongue; and after the fiery face of the orb of day has disappeared in his ocean bed, and the wondrous pillars of light shooting aslant the sky, proclaim that the “day is done,” and the night is at hand, they raise themselves from their knees, and turn silently away from the beach, which is left once more to twilight and the murmur, or, if in angry mood, the roar, of the sea as it breaks on the shore.