Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The next picture in my mind is Government House, on Malabar Point, with
the wide sea-view from the windows and broad balconies; abode of His
Excellency the Governor of the Bombay Presidency--a residence which is
European in everything but the native guards and servants, and is a home
and a palace of state harmoniously combined.
That was England, the English power, the English civilization, the modern
civilization--with the quiet elegancies and quiet colors and quiet tastes
and quiet dignity that are the outcome of the modern cultivation. And
following it came a picture of the ancient civilization of India--an hour
in the mansion of a native prince: Kumar Schri Samatsinhji Bahadur of the
Palitana State.
The young lad, his heir, was with the prince; also, the lad's sister, a
wee brown sprite, very pretty, very serious, very winning, delicately
moulded, costumed like the daintiest butterfly, a dear little fairyland
princess, gravely willing to be friendly with the strangers, but in the
beginning preferring to hold her father's hand until she could take stock
of them and determine how far they were to be trusted. She must have
been eight years old; so in the natural (Indian) order of things she
would be a bride in three or four years from now, and then this free
contact with the sun and the air and the other belongings of out-door
nature and comradeship with visiting male folk would end, and she would
shut herself up in the zenana for life, like her mother, and by inherited
habit of mind would be happy in that seclusion and not look upon it as an
irksome restraint and a weary captivity.
The game which the prince amuses his leisure with--however, never mind
it, I should never be able to describe it intelligibly. I tried to get
an idea of it while my wife and daughter visited the princess in the
zenana, a lady of charming graces and a fluent speaker of English, but I
did not make it out. It is a complicated game, and I believe it is said
that nobody can learn to play it well--but an Indian. And I was not able
to learn how to wind a turban. It seemed a simple art and easy; but that
was a deception. It is a piece of thin, delicate stuff a foot wide or
more, and forty or fifty feet long; and the exhibitor of the art takes
one end of it in his hands, and winds it in and out intricately about his
head, twisting it as he goes, and in a minute or two the thing is
finished, and is neat and symmetrical and fits as snugly as a mould.
We were interested in the wardrobe and the jewels, and in the silverware,
and its grace of shape and beauty and delicacy of ornamentation. The
silverware is kept locked up, except at meal-times, and none but the
chief butler and the prince have keys to the safe. I did not clearly
understand why, but it was not for the protection of the silver. It was
either to protect the prince from the contamination which his caste would
suffer if the vessels were touched by low-caste hands, or it was to
protect his highness from poison. Possibly it was both. I believe a
salaried taster has to taste everything before the prince ventures it--an
ancient and judicious custom in the East, and has thinned out the tasters
a good deal, for of course it is the cook that puts the poison in. If I
were an Indian prince I would not go to the expense of a taster, I would
eat with the cook.
Ceremonials are always interesting; and I noted that the Indian
good-morning is a ceremonial, whereas ours doesn't amount to that. In
salutation the son reverently touches the father's forehead with a small
silver implement tipped with vermillion paste which leaves a red spot
there, and in return the son receives the father's blessing. Our good
morning is well enough for the rowdy West, perhaps, but would be too
brusque for the soft and ceremonious East.
After being properly necklaced, according to custom, with great garlands
made of yellow flowers, and provided with betel-nut to chew, this
pleasant visit closed, and we passed thence to a scene of a different
sort: from this glow of color and this sunny life to those grim
receptacles of the Parsee dead, the Towers of Silence. There is
something stately about that name, and an impressiveness which sinks
deep; the hush of death is in it. We have the Grave, the Tomb, the
Mausoleum, God's Acre, the Cemetery; and association has made them
eloquent with solemn meaning; but we have no name that is so majestic as
that one, or lingers upon the ear with such deep and haunting pathos.
On lofty ground, in the midst of a paradise of tropical foliage and
flowers, remote from the world and its turmoil and noise, they stood--the
Towers of Silence; and away below was spread the wide groves of cocoa
palms, then the city, mile on mile, then the ocean with its fleets of
creeping ships all steeped in a stillness as deep as the hush that
hallowed this high place of the dead. The vultures were there. They
stood close together in a great circle all around the rim of a massive
low tower--waiting; stood as motionless as sculptured ornaments, and
indeed almost deceived one into the belief that that was what they were.
Presently there was a slight stir among the score of persons present, and
all moved reverently out of the path and ceased from talking. A funeral
procession entered the great gate, marching two and two, and moved
silently by, toward the Tower. The corpse lay in a shallow shell, and
was under cover of a white cloth, but was otherwise naked. The bearers
of the body were separated by an interval of thirty feet from the
mourners. They, and also the mourners, were draped all in pure white,
and each couple of mourners was figuratively bound together by a piece of
white rope or a handkerchief--though they merely held the ends of it in
their hands. Behind the procession followed a dog, which was led in a
leash. When the mourners had reached the neighborhood of the Tower
--neither they nor any other human being but the bearers of the dead must
approach within thirty feet of it--they turned and went back to one of
the prayer-houses within the gates, to pray for the spirit of their dead.
The bearers unlocked the Tower's sole door and disappeared from view
within. In a little while they came out bringing the bier and the white
covering-cloth, and locked the door again. Then the ring of vultures
rose, flapping their wings, and swooped down into the Tower to devour the
body. Nothing was left of it but a clean-picked skeleton when they
flocked-out again a few minutes afterward.
The principle which underlies and orders everything connected with a
Parsee funeral is Purity. By the tenets of the Zoroastrian religion, the
elements, Earth, Fire, and Water, are sacred, and must not be
contaminated by contact with a dead body. Hence corpses must not be
burned, neither must they be buried. None may touch the dead or enter
the Towers where they repose except certain men who are officially
appointed for that purpose. They receive high pay, but theirs is a
dismal life, for they must live apart from their species, because their
commerce with the dead defiles them, and any who should associate with
them would share their defilement. When they come out of the Tower the
clothes they are wearing are exchanged for others, in a building within
the grounds, and the ones which they have taken off are left behind, for
they are contaminated, and must never be used again or suffered to go
outside the grounds. These bearers come to every funeral in new
garments. So far as is known, no human being, other than an official
corpse-bearer--save one--has ever entered a Tower of Silence after its
consecration. Just a hundred years ago a European rushed in behind the
bearers and fed his brutal curiosity with a glimpse of the forbidden
mysteries of the place. This shabby savage's name is not given; his
quality is also concealed. These two details, taken in connection with
the fact that for his extraordinary offense the only punishment he got
from the East India Company's Government was a solemn official
"reprimand"--suggest the suspicion that he was a European of consequence.
The same public document which contained the reprimand gave warning that
future offenders of his sort, if in the Company's service, would be
dismissed; and if merchants, suffer revocation of license and exile to
England.
The Towers are not tall, but are low in proportion to their
circumference, like a gasometer. If you should fill a gasometer half way
up with solid granite masonry, then drive a wide and deep well down
through the center of this mass of masonry, you would have the idea of a
Tower of Silence. On the masonry surrounding the well the bodies lie, in
shallow trenches which radiate like wheel-spokes from the well. The
trenches slant toward the well and carry into it the rainfall.
Underground drains, with charcoal filters in them, carry off this water
from the bottom of the well.
When a skeleton has lain in the Tower exposed to the rain and the flaming
sun a month it is perfectly dry and clean. Then the same bearers that
brought it there come gloved and take it up with tongs and throw it into
the well. There it turns to dust. It is never seen again, never touched
again, in the world. Other peoples separate their dead, and preserve and
continue social distinctions in the grave--the skeletons of kings and
statesmen and generals in temples and pantheons proper to skeletons of
their degree, and the skeletons of the commonplace and the poor in places
suited to their meaner estate; but the Parsees hold that all men rank
alike in death--all are humble, all poor, all destitute. In sign of
their poverty they are sent to their grave naked, in sign of their
equality the bones of the rich, the poor, the illustrious and the obscure
are flung into the common well together. At a Parsee funeral there are
no vehicles; all concerned must walk, both rich and poor, howsoever great
the distance to be traversed may be. In the wells of the Five Towers of
Silence is mingled the dust of all the Parsee men and women and children
who have died in Bombay and its vicinity during the two centuries which
have elapsed since the Mohammedan conquerors drove the Parsees out of
Persia, and into that region of India. The earliest of the five towers
was built by the Modi family something more than 200 years ago, and it is
now reserved to the heirs of that house; none but the dead of that blood
are carried thither.
The origin of at least one of the details of a Parsee funeral is not now
known--the presence of the dog. Before a corpse is borne from the house
of mourning it must be uncovered and exposed to the gaze of a dog; a dog
must also be led in the rear of the funeral. Mr. Nusserwanjee Byranijee,
Secretary to the Parsee Punchayet, said that these formalities had once
had a meaning and a reason for their institution, but that they were
survivals whose origin none could now account for. Custom and tradition
continue them in force, antiquity hallows them. It is thought that in
ancient times in Persia the dog was a sacred animal and could guide souls
to heaven; also that his eye had the power of purifying objects which had
been contaminated by the touch of the dead; and that hence his presence
with the funeral cortege provides an ever-applicable remedy in case of
need.
The Parsees claim that their method of disposing of the dead is an
effective protection of the living; that it disseminates no corruption,
no impurities of any sort, no disease-germs; that no wrap, no garment
which has touched the dead is allowed to touch the living afterward; that
from the Towers of Silence nothing proceeds which can carry harm to the
outside world. These are just claims, I think. As a sanitary measure,
their system seems to be about the equivalent of cremation, and as sure.
We are drifting slowly--but hopefully--toward cremation in these days.
It could not be expected that this progress should be swift, but if it be
steady and continuous, even if slow, that will suffice. When cremation
becomes the rule we shall cease to shudder at it; we should shudder at
burial if we allowed ourselves to think what goes on in the grave.
The dog was an impressive figure to me, representing as he did a mystery
whose key is lost. He was humble, and apparently depressed; and he let
his head droop pensively, and looked as if he might be trying to call
back to his mind what it was that he had used to symbolize ages ago when
he began his function. There was another impressive thing close at hand,
but I was not privileged to see it. That was the sacred fire--a fire
which is supposed to have been burning without interruption for more than
two centuries; and so, living by the same heat that was imparted to it so
long ago.
The Parsees are a remarkable community. There are only about 60,000 in
Bombay, and only about half as many as that in the rest of India; but
they make up in importance what they lack in numbers. They are highly
educated, energetic, enterprising, progressive, rich, and the Jew himself
is not more lavish or catholic in his charities and benevolences. The
Parsees build and endow hospitals, for both men and animals; and they and
their womenkind keep an open purse for all great and good objects. They
are a political force, and a valued support to the government. They have
a pure and lofty religion, and they preserve it in its integrity and
order their lives by it.
We took a final sweep of the wonderful view of plain and city and ocean,
and so ended our visit to the garden and the Towers of Silence; and the
last thing I noticed was another symbol--a voluntary symbol this one; it
was a vulture standing on the sawed-off top of a tall and slender and
branchless palm in an open space in the ground; he was perfectly
motionless, and looked like a piece of sculpture on a pillar. And he had
a mortuary look, too, which was in keeping with the place.