arden, lest it
should carry defilement into the city. Perfectly new garments are
supplied at each funeral. In a fortnight, or, at most, four weeks,
the same bearers return, and, with gloved hands and implements
resembling tongs, place the dry skeleton in the central well. There
the bones find their last resting-place, and there the dust of whole
generations of Parsees commingling is left undisturbed for
centuries.

The revolting sight of the gorged vultures made me turn my back on
the towers with ill-concealed abhorrence. I asked the secretary how
it was possible to become reconciled to such usage. His reply was
nearly in the following words: "Our prophet Zoroaster, who lived
6,000 years ago, taught us to regard the elements as symbols of the
Deity. Earth, fire, water, he said, ought never, under any
circumstances, to be defiled by contact with putrefying flesh.
Naked, he said, came we into the world and naked we ought to leave
it. But the decaying particles of our bodies should be dissipated as
rapidly as possible and in such a way that neither Mother Earth nor
the beings she supports should be contaminated in the slightest
degree. In fact, our prophet was the greatest of health officers,
and, following his sanitary laws, we build our towers on the tops of
the hills, above all human habitations. We spare no expense in
constructing them of the hardest materials, and we expose our
putrescent bodies in open stone receptacles, resting on fourteen
feet of solid granite, not necessarily to be consumed by vultures,
but to be dissipated in the speediest possible manner and without
the possibility of polluting the earth or contaminating a single
being dwelling thereon. God, indeed, sends the vultures, and, as a
matter of fact, these birds do their appointed work much more
expeditiously than millions of insects would do if we committed our
bodies to the ground. In a sanitary point of view, nothing can be
more perfect than our plan. Even the rain-water which washes our
skeletons is conducted by channels into purifying charcoal. Here in
these five towers rest the bones of all the Parsees that have lived
in Bombay for the last two hundred years. We form a united body in
life and we are united in death."

It would appear that the reasons given for this peculiar mode of
disposing of the dead by the Parsee secretary are quite at variance with
the ideas advanced b