hta, as they call Zoroaster. Compared with it the
Hindu pagodas look like brightly painted Easter eggs. Generally they are
consecrated to Hanuman, the monkey-god and the faithful ally of Rama, or
to the elephant headed Ganesha, the god of the occult wisdom, or to one
of the Devis. You meet with these temples in every street. Before each
there is a row of pipals (Ficus religiosa) centuries old, which no
temple can dispense with, because these trees are the abode of the
elementals and the sinful souls.

All this is entangled, mixed, and scattered, appearing to one's eyes
like a picture in a dream. Thirty centuries have left their traces
here. The innate laziness and the strong conservative tendencies of
the Hindus, even before the European invasion, preserved all kinds of
monuments from the ruinous vengeance of the fanatics, whether those
memorials were Buddhist, or belonged to some other unpopular sect.
The Hindus are not naturally given to senseless vandalism, and a
phrenologist would vainly look for a bump of destructiveness on their
skulls. If you meet with antiquities that, having been spared by time,
are, nowadays, either destroyed or disfigured, it is not they who are
to blame, but either Mussulmans, or the Portuguese under the guidance of
the Jesuits.

At last we were anchored and, in a moment, were besieged, ourselves as
well as our luggage, by numbers of naked skeleton-like Hindus, Parsees,
Moguls, and various other tribes. All this crowd emerged, as if from the
bottom of the sea, and began to shout, to chatter, and to yell, as only
the tribes of Asia can. To get rid of this Babel confusion of tongues as
soon as possible, we took refuge in the first bunder boat and made for
the shore.

Once settled in the bungalow awaiting us, the first thing we were struck
with in Bombay was the millions of crows and vultures. The first are, so
to speak, the County Council of the town, whose duty it is to clean the
streets, and to kill one of them is not only forbidden by the police,
but would be very dangerous. By killing one you would rouse the
vengeance of every Hindu, who is always ready to offer his own life in
exchange for a crow's. The souls of the sinful forefathers transmigrate
into crows and to kill one is to interfere with the law of Karma and
to expose the poor ancestor to something still worse. Such is the firm
belief, not only of Hindus, but of Parsees, even the most enlightened
amongst them. The strange behavi