History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

CHAP. IV. | THE ZOROASTRIAN BELIEF. 207

the circumstances of the case. Cremation, doubtless, is the best of all existing methods, but according to the law of Zoroaster it is sinful to pollute fire with such an unclean thing asa dead body. The answer of the Parsis to other races when they express their abhorrence of this practice is the same as was given by Mr. Nasarvanji Beramji, the Secretary to the Parsi Panchayet, to Mr. Monier Williams, Professor of Sanscrit in the University of Oxford, when that learned gentleman went to see the tower of silence on Malabar Hill at Bombay during his first visit to India. Professor Monier Williams asked him how it was possible to become reconciled to such a usage,

and he received the following answer :—

“Our Prophet, Zoroaster, who lived three thousand 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, we came 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 living 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