Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1894 — FOOD FOR VULTURES. [ARTICLE]

FOOD FOR VULTURES.

BURIAL CUSTOMS AMONG THE PARSEES. Ths Dead Fed to Birds of Prey-. Weird Temples of Silenoe--The White Stone of Parting and Good. By. Among all the strange burial customs the world over there is none more horribly interesting than that which Is followed even until to-day among the Parsees in India, says a writer in the Pall Mall Budget. There is a strangeness even about the very nariie—a Tower of Silence—the place where the Parsees put away their dead and leave them for the vultures to swoop down and feed upon. The Dokhma—to give the correct name to the round Parsee sepulchers that we, In our easy Anglo-Indian fashion, call Towers of Silence—is always on high ground. The sanitary reasons for this are very obvious. In Bombay there are three towers. They were built at different periods, and mark the increase in Bombay of Parsee affluence and of Parsee numbers. The oldest and smallest was built soon after the followers of Zoroaster had fled from Persia to India. These Parsee mortuaries were in every way different from what I had imagined them. But after having seen what they really are, my utmost philosophy revolts and sickens at the thought of the poor dead body, torn, as it is, by the claws and beaks of the huinan-flesh-fed vultures. But that the Parsee disposition of the dead is anything but healthy, I dispute. And the surroundings and situation of the Bombay Dokhmas are dignified and beautiful. Our guide took us into a little house, In which is kept a model of the Dokhma. From this you learn w’hat the inner construction of every Parsee Dokhma is; for into no Dokhma are you allowed to look. On the bottom of the tower is a thick flooring of lime. A few feet above Is the grating upon which the bodies are laid. This grating is divided into, three tiers; not above each other but inside each other. Each tier is divided into the same number of sections. These sections are formed by Iron rays that spring from the center of the tower to its outer circumference or wall. Hence the apartments of the inner tier are smaller than, those of the center tier—those of the center tier smaller than those of the outer. The outer tier is reserved for the bodies of men; the inner tier for the bodies of children, and on the center tier the swooping vultures find the bodies of the Parsee women.

Only the attendants of the Dokhma are allowed to enter it with the dead. They pass quickly up a narrow aisle that runs from the doorway and lay the dead upon the appointed place. They tear the sheets rapidly from the body, for the vultures are waiting, and they do not wait tamely.. Only one article is left upon the corpse—the kusti. The attendants hurry away and the vultures, with, horrid cries, rush down upon their prey. The vultures are kept and bred by the attendants of the Dokhmas for the purpose of cleaning the flesh from the bones of the Parsee dead. They are only a few hours, at the Longest, in executing their gruesome tusk. The Dokhma is roofless. When the’ rain falls it washes the dust of the crumbling bones down to the lime flooring. From there it gradually drains away and is absorbed again, into the economy of nature In a way absolutely harmless to the living. A few yards from the tower of Silence is a white stone. It Is kept clean and shines up from the green, grass. Nearer the Dokhma than thia stone no one may go save the dead, and the professional attendants. It is the Stone of Parting, the Stone of Good-by, of Everlasting Farewell. Beyond it the dead must go from those who have loved him, those he has loved—go alone into the place of death and Into the something after death which, in Parsee usage, seems to us worse than death itself.