The body is
picked clean in an hour by these vultures. It is considered very lucky
if they pick out the right eye first instead of the left, and the fact
is reported by the priests to the sorrowing relatives. When the bones
are perfectly clean, a Parsee priest pushes them into the well. When
rain comes, it carries off the ashes and bones; and the water runs
through these four outlets, with charcoal at the mouths to purify it,
before entering and defiling the earth, which would become putrid and
cause fever. The Parsees will not defile the earth by being buried in
it, and consider it is an honour to have a _living sepulchre_. The
vultures have on an average, when there is no epidemic, about three
bodies a day, so that they can never be said to starve. The whole
thing struck me as being revolting and disgusting in the extreme, and
I was glad to descend from this melancholy height to Bombay.
We had a good deal of gaiety during our stay in Bombay, and every one
was most kind. We saw many interesting people, and made many pleasant
excursions which were too numerous to be mentioned in detail here. I
have given a description of the Parsee burial-ground, and I think at
the risk of being thought morbid that I must also describe our visit
to the Hindu Smashan, or burning-ground, in the Sonapur quarter, where
we saw a funeral, or rather a cremation. The corpse was covered with
flowers, the forehead reddened with sandalwood, and the mouth blackened.
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