THE TOWERS OF SILENCE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1553, 9 May 1887, Page 2

THE TOWERS OF SILENCE

A most eolemn account of the death and burial of the Paraees is published In Macmillan's Magazine. When the hour of death ia at hand, it flay a, the dying Parsee is carried down to the cel'ar, or the lowest room m the house — with what notion I failed to learn. Afterwards the body is borne to a great burial tower, there to be" exposed to the winds of heaven, the burning sun, the beating rain, and all the host of foul cirrion birds. Some rich families have a private tower of their own, a sort of family mauaoleura. The public burial toweis, of which tnore are five, stand on Malabar Hill, In a garden of fb waring shrubs overlooking the aea. Here, amid fragrant bowers of roses and jagßaralnaß, Bland the*e Towerß of Silenoe, as they are called, ghaßtly receptacles for the dead. They are about thirty feet high and sixty feet wide. On tbe top of each is an open grating on which the bodies are laid m three oircles, children m the centre, then the women, and men at the outer edge. Innumerable birds of prey are for ever hoverlcg with their sharp hnngry ories round these towers, or sitting perched on them, solemnly wa'ting for th.c gpiteful feaßt that is never long delayed — a feait which dally averages three Parseea, baaides woman and children ; for it is estimated that each day three of these prosperous, intelligent, well to-do looking merchants find • their last resting place m the voracious maws of theae ravenouß birds. And when the bl'ds have done thair part, and winds and sun and rain have all combined to whiten the skeleton to a thing like polished ivory, gradually the bunes seperate and fall through ihe ope a grating Into a well below the tower, whenoe, it is said, they are taken by a subterranean passage and oast into the sea, and bo the space is left clear for the nexb comers.' In ladia one gets pretty well aooustomed to varied modes of dealing with the dead and learns t.i look on the hungry crows and vnltures perohed on the floating Hindoo almost as a raitter of course. But there it is an accident of poverty — the end of one whose friends, too poor to purchase Bpfficlent fuel for bs cremation, hare of necessity committed his body to the sacred river. But these towers of death, where, by deliberate choice, the day once so dearly loved 1b given to be torn and lacerated, lika so much cairlon, by loathsome birds — placed there almost before-tb,e warm blcod has had time to chill, as a thing that haa become utterly worthless — this is, m truth, a mode of sepulture unutterably repugnant to ..the ralnd that contrasts it with the deep peace of our green churchyards, out ail en t sjands of the dead, and a thousand other {uiet resting-plaoaa besides brown rivers. >r rippling sea-waves.

Very few people (says a contemporary) have my conception what really India is, or of its aagnitude. Ita population is almost appaling m point of magnitude, numbering as it loes 250,000,000 souls, a number so vast, hat, praotioally, and so far as any person is ble to oonoeive them, it might be the idenical number of sands on the shore. Naturlly, witli suob a mass of peoplß, the territory bey jnhab.it is just aa v^st, A nian may flaßb brough Eugland, comparatively speaking m few hours ; but to get from Calcutta tq lombay two whole days and three nights lust be spent m the train, From J£urraohee } Calcutta the distance is even greater, and )ur days and four nights aro gonsumed m the wney.