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NOVEMBER, 1877.]
THE PÅRST RELIGION.
311
PARSI FUNERAL AND INITIATORY RITES, AND THE PARSI RELIGION.
BY MONIER WILLIAMS, BODEN PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT, OXFORD. BSERVANT European travellers when by the builders simply because they contained
they first arrive at Bombay.cannot fail to almost invisible veins of quartz, through which be struck with the interesting contrasts which it was possible that impure particles might find everywhere meet the eye. Perhaps the most their way, and be carried, in the course of cenremarkable of such contrasts is that afforded by turies, by percolating moisture, into the soil. the different methods adopted by the adherents Earth, water, and fire are, according to Zoroasof different creeds for the disposal of their dead. ter, sacred symbols of the wisdom, goodness,
There in Bombay one may see, within a short and omnipotence of the Deity, and orght never, distance of each other, the Christian cemetery, under any circumstances, to be defiled. Espe. the Muhammadan graveyard, the Hindû burn- cially ought every effort to be made to protect ing-ground, and the Pârsi Dakh mas, or Mother Earth from the pollution which would Towers of Silence. The latter, five in number, result if putrefying corpses were allowed to acwith a sixth-which is square instead of cir- cumulate in the ground. (Vandidad iii. 27.) cular-used for criminals, are, as most Anglo- Hence the disciples of Zoroaster spare neither Indians know, at the summit of Malabar Hill, in trouble nor expense in erecting solid and ima benatiful garden, amid tropical trees swarming penetrable stone platforms fourteen feet thick with vultures. I obtained leave to visit these for the reception of their dead. The cost of towers in the autumn of 1875, and again short- erection is greatly increased by the circumly after my second arrival in India last year. stance that the towers ought always to be placed
A correct model of the principal tower was on high hills, or in the highest situations availthen kindly presented to me by order of Sir able. (Vand. vi. 93.) I was informed by the Jamsetji Jijibhai, and a careful examination Secretary that the largest of the five towers of its structure enables me to describe its was constructed at an outlay of three lakhs of dimensions with accuracy. Towers they have rupees. certainly no right to be called, for their height The upper surface of the massive granito is out of all proportion to their diameter. column is divided into compartments by narrow The chief tower may be described as an up-| grooved ridges of stone, radiating like the right cylindrical stone structure, in shape and spokes of a wheel from the central well. These solidity not unlike a gigantic millstone, about stone ridges form the sides of seventy-two shalfourteen feet high and ninety feet in dia- low open receptacles or coffins, arranged in three meter, resting on the ground in the centre of concentric rings. The ridges are grooved--that the garden. It is built throughout of solid is, they have narrow channels running down granite, except in the centre, where a well, ten their whole length, which channels are connected feet deep and about fifteen across, leads down by side ducts with the open coffins, so as to conto an excavation under the masonry, containing vey all moisture to the central well and into four drains at right angles to each other, ter- the lower drains. The number three is emminated by holes filled with charcoal. Round blematical of Zoroaster's three moral precepts, the upper and outer edge of this solid cylinder, Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds,' and completely hiding the interior surface from (Vand. v. 67), and the seventy-two open stone view, is a high stone parapet. This is con- receptacles. represent the seventy-two chapters structed so as to seem to form one piece with of his Yasna, a portion of the Zand-Avastá. the solid stone work, and being, like it, covered Each concentric circle of open stone coffins with chunam, gives the whole erection, when has a pathway surrounding it, the object of viewed from the outside, the appearance of a which is to make each receptacle accessible to low tower. Clearly one great object aimed at the corpse-bearers. Hence there are three conby the Parsis in the construction of these centric circular pathways, the outermost of strange depositaries of their dead is solidity. which is immodiately below the parapet, and We saw two or three enormons massive stones these three pathways are crossed by another lying on the ground, which had been rejected conducting from the solitary door which admits
