The Parsees have made Bombay their own, more surely even than the
Scotch possess Calcutta. Numerically very weak, they are long-headed and
far-sighted beyond any Indian and are better qualified to traffick
and to control. All the cotton mills are theirs, and theirs the finest
houses in the most beautiful sites. When that conflict begins between
the Hindus and the Mohammedans which will render India a waste and a
shambles, it is the Parsees who will occupy the high places--until a
more powerful conqueror arrives.
Bombay has no more curious sight than the Towers of Silence, the Parsee
cemetery; and one of the first questions that one is asked is if one
has visited them. But when the time came for me to ascend those sinister
steps on Malabar Hill I need hardly say that my companion was a many
years' resident of Bombay who, although he had long intended to go
there, had hitherto neglected his opportunities. Throughout my travels I
was, it is pleasant to think, in this way the cause of more sightseeing
in others than they might ever have suffered. To give but one other
instance typical of many--I saw Faneuil Hall in Boston in the company
of a Bostonian some thirty years of age, whose office was within a few
yards of this historic and very interesting building, and whose business
is more intimately associated with culture than any other, but who had
never before crossed the threshold.
The Towers of Silence, which are situated in a very beautiful park, with
little temples among the trees and flowers, consist of five circular
buildings, a model of one of which is displayed to visitors. Inside the
tower is an iron grating on which the naked corpses are laid, and no
sooner are they there than the awaiting vultures descend and consume
the flesh. I saw these grisly birds sitting expectantly in rows on the
coping of the towers, and the sight was almost too gruesome. Such is
their voracity that the body is a skeleton in an hour or so. The Parsees
choose this method of dissolution because since they worship fire they
must not ask it to demean itself with the dead; and both earth and water
they hold also too sacred to use for burial. Hence this strange and--at
the first blush--repellant compromise. The sight of the cemetery that
awaits us in England is rarely cheering, but if to that cemetery were
attached a regiment of cruel and hideous birds of prey we should shudder
indeed. Whether the Parsees shudder I cannot say, but they give no sign
of it. They build their palaces in full view of these terrible Towers,
pass, on their way to dinner parties, luxuriously in Rolls-Royces beside
the trees where the vultures roost, and generally behave themselves as
if this were the best possible of worlds and the only one. And I think
they are wise.
Oriental apathy, or, at any rate, unruffled receptiveness, may carry its
owner very far, and yet if these vultures cause no misgivings, no chills
at the heart, I shall be surprised. As for those olive-skinned Parsee
girls, with the long oval faces and the lustrous eyes--how must it
strike them?
It was not till I went to the caves of Elephanta that I saw vultures
in their marvellous flight. It is here that they breed, and the sky was
full of them at an incredible distance up, resting on their great
wings against the wind, circling and deploying. At this height they are
magnificent. But seen at close quarters they are horrible, revolting. On
a day's hunting which I shall describe later I was in at the death of
a gond, or swamp-deer, at about noon, and we returned for the carcase
about three hours later, only to find it surrounded by some hundreds of
these birds tearing at it in a kind of frenzy of gluttony. They were not
in the least disconcerted by our approach, and not until the bearers had
taken sticks to them would they leave. The heavy half-gorged flapping of
a vulture's wings as it settles itself to a new aspect of its repast is
the most disgusting sight I have seen.
To revert to the Towers of Silence, one is brought very near to death
everywhere in the East. We have our funeral corteges at home, with
sufficient frequency, but they do not emphasize the thought of the
necessary end of all things as do the swathed corpses that one meets so
often being carried through the streets, on their way to this or that
burning place. In Bombay I met several every day, with their bearers and
followers all in white, and all moving with the curious trot that seems
to be reserved for such obsequies. There were always, also, during my
stay, new supplies of fire-wood outside the great Hindu burning ground
in Queen's Road; and yet no epidemic was raging; the city was normal
save for a strike of mill-hands. It is true that I met wedding parties
almost equally often; but in India a wedding party is not, as with us, a
suggestion of new life to replace the dead, for the brides so often are
infants.
One of the differences between the poor of London and the poor of India
may be noticed here. In the East-End a funeral is considered to be
a failure unless its cost is out of all proportion to the survivors'
means, while a wedding is a matter of a few shillings; whereas in India
a funeral is a simple ceremony, to be hurried over, while the wedding
festivities last for weeks and often plunge the family into debts from
which they never recover.