ed, like chantry chapels, each with its
separate statue at least twenty feet in height. The whole Hindu
pantheon, seems to be represented by carved figures, but all cluster
about the god Siva. The really characteristic and indispensable feature
of these caves is, however, still to be mentioned. It is the image of
the lingam, or phallus, gigantic in size, and carven out of solid stone,
in the innermost shrine, where it is the object of hysterical or lustful
worship. Every year, on an appointed feast-day, three or four thousand
people throng to this shrine, some to pray for offspring, others to seek
license for illicit pleasure. Elephanta has become in this way the
symbol and propagator of a debasing superstition. Such worship is only a
deification of the lower instincts of human nature.

Returning to Bombay, it was natural to think of the Towers of Silence,
for these too are located on a lovely eminence, called the Malabar Hill,
and overlooking the city and the bay. These towers are enclosures in
which the Parsees, a most intelligent, wealthy, and influential sect,
dispose of the bodies of their dead, by laying the forms in the open air
where they can be devoured by vultures. The towers themselves are at
least half a dozen in number, and they vary in size. But the style of
their construction is uniform. Inside of a lofty circular wall are
concentric beds of stone, each with its groove in which a corpse can be
laid. There are three concentric circles, the outermost for men, the
next inner for women, the innermost for children. The structure has no
roof, but is open to the air. Great flocks of vultures perch upon the
top of the outermost enclosing wall, waiting in silence and expectation
for the time when they can descend upon their prey. Only a half-hour
elapses after a body is laid on its stony bed, before these ravenous
birds have torn every morsel of flesh from its bones. The skeleton is
then left to disintegrate by the action of the elements, until the rains
wash the remaining dust into a great pit at the center of the circles,
from which receptacle the refuse is conducted away by drains during the
rainy season, to mingle with the surrounding earth.

This is the Parsees' "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." They glory in this
method of disposing of their dead, and they think it far more natural
and impressive than the common Hindu method of cremation. We must grant
that all methods of disposing of the dead are painful. But