The manner in which the Parsees dispose of their dead seems to us too shocking to be tolerated by a people so gentle and refined. But they have grown familiar with a custom that, generation after generation, has been observed by their race till it has ceased to be repugnant. They call it "consigning the dead to the element of air." For this purpose they have roofless enclosures, the walls of which are twenty-five or thirty feet high, and within are three biers—one each for men, women and children. Upon these the bodies of the dead are laid, and fastened down with chains or iron bands. Presently birds of prey, so numerous within the tropics and always waiting to devour, pounce upon the corpse and quickly tear the flesh from the bones, while the skeleton remains intact. This is afterward deposited in a pit dug within the same enclosure, and which remains open till completely filled up with bones; after which another is dug, and when the enclosure can conveniently contain no more pits a new one is selected and prepared. None but priests and bearers of the dead may enter, or even look into, these walled cemeteries. The priests, by virtue of their holy office, are preserved from defilement, but the bearers are men set apart for this express purpose, and they are considered so unclean that they may not enter under the roof of any other Parsee or salute him on the street. If in passing a bearer do but touch one's clothes accidentally, he is subject to a heavy fine, while he who has been thus contaminated must bathe his entire person and burn every article of raiment he wore at the time of his defilement.
I was anxious to visit one of their temples, but this, Sir Jamsetjee assured me, was impossible, as none but the initiated are allowed even to approach the entrance, still less to get a glimpse of what is passing within. He, however, volunteered the information that, so far as the sanctuary itself was concerned, there was little to be seen, only naked walls, bare floors, and an altar upon which burns the sacred fire brought with the Parsees from Persia, and which, he said, had never been extinguished since it was kindled by Zoroaster from the sun four thousand years ago. Of the form of service I could not induce the baronet to speak, but I learned afterward from my ship-friend that the altar is enclosed by gratings, within which none but the priest may enter. He goes in every day to tend "the eternal fire," when he must remain for the space of an hour, repeating certain invocations, with a bundle of rods in his hand to repel any unclean spirits that should venture to approach the sacred fire. Meanwhile, the assembled multitudes prostrate themselves without and offer up their silent adoration. "Yet, after all," musingly said the Parsee, "the universe is the throne of the invisible God, of whom fire is but the emblem, and we worship Him most acceptably with our eyes fixed on the east when the sun rides forth at morning in his celestial chariot of fire." This form of worship those curious in such matters may see on any bright morning at Bombay, where whole crowds of Parsee men, women and children rush out at sunrise to greet the king of day and offer up their morning oblations. I was not surprised at the avowed preference of my Parsee friends for out-door worship, since it is well known that the ancient Persians not only permitted few temples to be erected to their gods, and held in abhorrence all painted and graven images, but they laid it to the charge of the Greeks, as a daring impiety, that "they shut up their gods in shrines and temples, like puppets in a cabinet, when all created things were open to them and the wide world was their dwelling-place." It was probably religious zeal, even more than revenge against the Greeks, that induced the burning of the temple at Athens by Xerxes, led on, as he may have been, by the fanatical zeal of the Magi who accompanied him.
Plutarch speaks of the Persians, in common with the Chaldeans and Egyptians, as worshipers of the sun under the name of Mithra, whom they regarded as standing between Ormuzd, "the author of good," and Ahriman, "the author of evil," occupied alternately in aiding the former and subduing the latter. So do the Parsees of our own day regard him; and their only hope for the ultimate triumph of Ormuzd is in constant sacrifices and prayers and propitiatory offerings to the sun as the fire that is to burn out and utterly consume all evil from our earth. Fire is to the Parsees now, as it has ever been, the holiest of all holy things, carried about by princes and great men for safety; by warriors, as that which is to give them the victory over their foes; and by all, as their sole and ever-present deity. Sir Jamsetjee assured me that the intelligent Parsees regard the sun and fire as only the symbols that are to remind them of the God they worship. But there can be no doubt that the mass of the Parsees literally worship the sun and the "sacred fire;" and hence arise the utter repugnance many of them have to celebrating their religious rites within closed walls, and the decided preference ever shown for out-door worship. I have often heard them say that the Fire-god shows his aversion to confinement by drooping when he is shut up, and growing vigorous just in proportion as free scope is given him. The sun appears everywhere on the shields and armor of the ancient Persians, as on some of the old-time monuments that have come down to us; while occasionally Mithra is depicted as a youthful hero, with high Persian cap, his knee on a prostrate bull, into whose heart he seems plunging a dagger—symbolically, "the power of evil" in complete subjection to the victorious sun, and about to be for ever annihilated.
Zoroaster (called by the Persians Zerduscht) was not, the Parsees say, the founder of their sect, but only the reviser and perfecter of the system as it now exists among them. Living in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, he was the contemporary, probably an associate, of the prophet Daniel. Before the advent of this reformer the Magi acknowledged two great First Causes—i.e., the light and the darkness, the former the author of all good, the latter of every evil, moral and physical—and these they believed were at perpetual war with each other. Zoroaster taught, as he may have learned from Daniel, that there was One greater still, who created both the light and the darkness, making both to subserve His own will. He also inculcated the duty of building temples for the preservation of the sacred fire from storm and tempest, when "by sudden extinction of the light the powers of darkness do gain often a signal victory." The Parsees hold in supreme veneration the name of Zoroaster as the most noted of all their Magi for wisdom and virtue. They believe that the sacred fire was lighted by him miraculously from the sun—that it has burned steadily ever since, and can never go out till it has consumed all evil from the earth and the good has become universally triumphant. They claim also that from the reforms wrought by Zoroaster there was never the slightest change in any of their observances until about twelve centuries ago, when Persia was overrun and conquered by the Mohammedan Arabs. But not the fiercest persecution could induce the Fire-worshipers to change their religion for that of the Koran. Preferring liberty and their altars in a foreign land to the alternative of apostasy or persecution at home, the aboriginal Persian inhabitants fled to other lands, settling immense colonies in Surat and Bombay, where their descendants form in our day a large and valuable element of the population. Their integrity, industry and enterprise are proverbial all over the East; and while they live strictly apart from all other races, the Parsees are never wanting in sympathy and help for those who need them. Dwelling amid nations who are almost universally destitute of veracity, the Parsees are eminently truthful; surrounded by polygamists and sensualists, they maintain habits of purity and virtue; and accustomed to every-day association with those who make a boast of cheating, my memory fails to recall the case of a single Fire-worshiper who was not strictly upright and honorable in his dealings.
Commencing with the worship of the sun, and of fire as his emblem, the Parsee grew into a sort of reverence for the elements of air, earth and water. The air must not be contaminated by foul odors, and of necessity no filth could be tolerated anywhere in house, street or suburb; and to this reverence for the purity of the atmosphere may be traced the absolute cleanliness for which Fire-worshipers are everywhere noted. As the earth must receive no defilement, the Parsees would deem it sacrilege to deposit therein their dead for corruption and decay; and hence have doubtless originated their strange rites of sepulture, as they believe that the body is thus more readily and rapidly reduced to its original elements. Streams of water, even the tiniest rivulets, are deemed too holy to be desecrated by washing or spitting in them, and still less would they make the water the receptacle of offal of any sort. To each of these elements, as well as to the fire, the Parsees still make oblations on their high-days. It is true that their ceremonies now are less imposing than those described by Xenophon, when a thousand head of cattle were immolated at a single festival, four beautiful bulls presented to Jupiter, or the sky, and a magnificent chariot, drawn by white horses crowned with flowers and wearing a golden yoke, was offered to the sun; while the king in his chariot was escorted by princes and great nobles, two thousand spearmen marching on either side, and three hundred sceptre-bearers, armed with javelins and mounted on splendidly-caparisoned horses, bringing up the rear. But those jubilant days have passed: the Fire-worshipers are in exile, and have no king to lead them, either in battle against their foes or in triumphal processions in honor of their gods. Yet is Parseeism not dead, nor even on the decrease. Sacrifices, numerous and costly, are still piled upon their altars, the finest cattle are dedicated to their gods, the flesh being cut up and roasted for the people, while the Magi cast the caul and a portion of the fat into the fire as emblematic of the souls of the victims being imbibed by the gods, while the grosser portions are rejected.
The sacrifices and those who offer them are always crowned with flowers, but the pontifical robes of the Magi, though of pure white silk, are severely plain in style and utterly devoid of ornament. In their lives the Magi claim to practice a rigid asceticism, making the earth their bed and subsisting wholly on fruit, vegetables and bread, besides submitting to frequent painful penances from fasting, scourging and the endurance of fatiguing exercises. "Wine, women and flesh" they are commanded to eschew as "special abominations to those who aspire to minister before the gods." The most remarkable feast of the ancient Parsees was one called by them the "sack-feast." On the appointed day a condemned malefactor was clothed in royal robes, seated on a kingly throne and the sceptre of regal power placed in his hand. Princes and people bowed the knee in mock homage before this king of a day, and he was suffered to glut his appetite with all manner of sensual delights till the sun went down, and then he was cruelly beaten with rods, and forthwith executed. (Were the crown and sceptre, the purple robe and mock reverence, that were the antecedents of the Redeemer's crucifixion, a reproduction of this barbarous custom?) The modern Parsees, though recognizing this feast as a legitimate part of their worship, say that they have not observed it since their flight from Persia in the eighth century, because since then, being under a foreign yoke, they have had no jurisdiction over human life, and durst not sacrifice even those who chanced to be in their power. This may be one reason for the renunciation of this barbarous practice of the olden time, but there has been wonderful progress in civilization during the last twelve hundred years; and certain it is that scenes of cruelty that suited the ferocious tastes of the eighth century could not possibly be repeated in the nineteenth.
FANNIE ROPER FEUDGE.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
A SWEDISH PROVINCIAL THEATRE.
It is not so magnificent as the Scala and San Carlo, and still, after seeing both those famous theatres, I must confess I preferred that of Carlstad to either. It is small and different in form from the generality: it reminded me, in fact, of a hall in a certain New England town where I used to go to the panorama as a child. There was a gallery like that in which the men and boys sat who tramped the loudest and kissed their hands, to the confusion of their neighbors, when the lights were turned down to enhance the effect of the burning of Moscow; only, at my panorama the gallery was unfashionable on account of the noisy male element, whereas at Carlstad it was the dress-circle. We—a party of Americans, the only foreigners in the house that night—occupied orchestra-stalls, as I presume the two or three front benches in the parquet may be called. There was a white cape in our vicinity, as well as one in the balcony; so our seats were probably as fashionable as those in the first and only circle; but behind us, stretching out to the doors and in under the gallery, was a dense mass unrelieved by opera-cloaks of any description; and that was the region of the unpretending—-of those who came simply to enjoy, to see and not to be seen.