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MODERN PARSEEISM.
visited and prayers said, looking towards the altar of sacred fire. Visits to friends, with ceremonial hand-joining, follow, and alms are given to the poor.
The Parsee infant, born on a ground floor, to which he is again brought as soon as he is dead, has his nativity Ceremonial cast on the seventh day by a Brahman or Parsee
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Deathbed
rites. astrologer-priest; at seven years old he is purified with nirang, and invested with the sacred girdle of seventy-two_threads, representing the seventy-two chapters of the Yasna. As the priest blesses the child, he throws upon its head portions of fruits, spices, and perfumes. This is the ceremony of the kusti. Marriages are carefully arranged by the astrologer, but are celebrated with a religious ceremony, in which the couple are tied together by a silken cord gradually wound round them, while a benediction is pronounced in Zend and Sanskrit. It is in their funerals that the Parforms. sees are most peculiar. A dying Parsee will be attended by a priest, who repeats to him consolatory texts from the Avesta, gives him the sacred Haoma juice to drink, and prays for the forgiveness of his sins. The body is then taken to a ground-floor room from which everything has been removed, laid upon stones, washed in warm water, dressed in clean white clothes, and laid upon an iron bier. The priest, in the presence of the corpse, gives an exhortation to the relatives to live pure and holy lives, so that they may meet the deceased again in paradise. This exhortation consists of the first gatha of Zoroaster. A dog is brought in to look at the deceased, this being known as the sag-did or dog's gaze. This used to be looked upon as a means of judging, by the dog's instinct, whether life was really extinct; but it is now explained as securing the passage of the soul over the Chinvat bridge, over which only the pious pass to heaven. The carriage of the body to the towers of The towers silence is committed to a special class of Parsees of silence. called Nessusalar, or unclean, from the work they perform. The towers of silence in Bombay are constructed on the top of Malabar Hill, a great home of vultures. Built of stone, they rise about twenty-five
