Religion and Customs of the Bombay Parsees
The Parsees of Bombay – a mere handful of exiles among millions of aliens – have so exerted their power as to change the life of a great city. Proscribed and persecuted, they have developed so powerfully their aptitude for commercial life that they represent the wealth of Bombay. Living up to the tenets of their creed, they have given far more liberally to charity and education than any other race. Some idea of the respect in which the Parsee is held may be gained from the fact that customs officers never search the baggage of one of these people; they take the Parsee's word that he has no dutiable goods. The commercial success and the high level of private life among the Parsees is due directly to their religion, which was founded by Zoroaster in ancient Persia three thousand years ago. As Max-Muller has well said, if Darius had overthrown Alexander of Greece, the modern world would probably have inherited the faith of Zoroaster, which does not differ in most of its essentials from the creed of Christ.
The popular idea of a Parsee is that he worships the sun. This is a misconception, due probably to the fact that the Parsee when saying his prayers always faces the sun or, in default of this, prays before a sacred fire in his temples; but he does not worship the sun, nor any gods or idols. His temples are bare, only the sacred fire of sandalwood burning in one corner. The Parsee recognizes an overruling god, Ahura-Mazda, the creator of the universe; he believes that Nature with its remarkable laws could not have come into being without a great first cause. But he believes that the universe created by Ahura-Mazda was invaded by a spirit of evil, Angra-Mainyush, which invites men to wicked deeds, falsehood and ignorance. Over against this evil spirit is the good spirit, Spenta-Mainyush, which represents God and stands for truth, goodness and knowledge. The incarnation of the evil spirit is known as Aherman, who corresponds to the Christian devil.
The whole Parsee creed is summed up in three words, which correspond to good thoughts, good words and good deeds. If one carries out in his life this creed, then his good thoughts, good words and good deeds will be his intercessors on the great bridge that leads the spirit from death to the gates of paradise. If his evil deeds and thoughts and words overbalance the good, then he goes straight down to the place of darkness and torment. If his good and evil deeds and thoughts exactly balance, then he passes into a kind of purgatory.
Fire, water and earth are all sacred to the Parsee; but fire represents the principle of creation and hence is most sacred. To him fire is the most perfect symbol of deity because of its purity, brightness and incorruptibility. The sacred fire that burns constantly in the Parsee temples is fed with chips of sandalwood. Prayer with the Parsee is obligatory, but it need not be said in the fire temple; the Parsee may pray to the sun or moon, the mountains or the sea. His prayer is first repentance for any evil thoughts or deeds and then for strength to lead a life of righteousness, charity and good deeds.
The most remarkable result of the Parsee religion is seen in the education of children. This is made a religious duty, and neglect of it entails terrible penalties – for the parents are responsible for the offenses of the badly-educated child, just as they share in the merit for good deeds performed by their children. It is the duty of a good Parsee not only to educate his own children but to do all in his power to help in general education. Hence the large benefactions that rich Parsees have made to found institutions for the education of the poor. Disobedience of children is one of the worst sins. The Parsees are also taught to observe sanitary laws, to bathe frequently, to take all measures to prevent the spread of contagion. Cleanliness is one of the chief virtues. To keep the earth pure the Parsee is enjoined to cultivate it. He is also admonished to drink sparingly of wine and not to sell it to any one who uses liquor to excess.
The Parsee creed urges the believer to help the community in which he lives and to give freely to charity. Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, the richest Parsee Bombay has known, set aside a fund of four million seven hundred and forty-three thousand rupees for charity and benevolence among all the people of his city, regardless of race or creed. The Parsee gives liberally to charity on the occasion of weddings or of deaths. The charity includes relieving the poor, helping a man to marry and aiding poor children to secure an education. The influence of the Parsee religion upon the literature and life of the people is very marked. There is no room for atheism, agnosticism or materialism. Faith in the existence of God and in the immortality of the soul is the corner-stone of the creed, but the Parsee spends no money and no effort in proselyting others.
Marriage is encouraged by the Parsee religion, because it encourages a virtuous and religious life. The marriage ceremony is peculiar. It is always performed in a large pavilion, whatever the wealth of the couple. In the case of the rich many invitations are issued and a fine wedding feast is spread. On the day set for the wedding, the bride and groom and the invited guests assemble in the pavilion. The bride as well as the groom is dressed in white. When the time comes for the ceremony the couple sit in chairs facing each other and a sheet is held up between them by friends, so that they cannot see each other. Then two priests begin intoning the marriage service. After several prayers a cord is wound around the two chairs seven times and the chairs are also bound together with a strip of cloth. More prayers and exhortations follow, both priests showering rice upon the couple. Finally the sheet is withdrawn, they and their chairs are placed side by side, each is given a cocoanut to hold that is bound to the other by a string, emblematic of the plenty that may bless the new home, and they are declared man and wife. Then they sign a document certifying that they have been united according to the Parsee ritual and witnesses sign their names.
Far stranger than the wedding customs of the Parsees are their burial rites. They believe that neither fire, earth nor water must be polluted by contact with a dead body, so neither burial nor cremation is permitted. Instead, they expose their dead to vultures which strip the flesh from the bones within an hour. This occurs in conical places, called towers of silence, which are shut off from human gaze. The Bombay towers of silence are on Malabar head, a beautiful residence district overlooking the city. Here, in a fine garden planted to many varieties of trees and shrubs, are five circular towers, each about twenty feet high, made of brick, covered with plaster.
While you are admiring the flowers and trees a funeral enters the gates. The body is carried by four professional bearers and is followed by two priests and the relatives and friends. All the mourners are clothed in white. They walk two by two, no matter how distant may be the house of death, each couple holding a handkerchief as a symbol of their union in sorrow. When the procession reaches the top of the hill the mourners diverge and take seats in the house of prayer, where the sacred fire is burning, or they seat themselves in the beautiful garden for meditation and prayer. The priests deliver the body to the two corpse bearers, who throw open the great iron door and enter with the body. The floor of the tower is of iron grating, arranged in three circles – the outer for men, the next for women and the inner for children. As the bearers lay the body down, they strip off the shroud. Then the iron door closes with a clang. This is the signal for a score of vultures to swoop down upon the body. No human eye can see this spectacle, but the imagination of the visitor pictures it in all its horror. Within a few minutes the gorged vultures begin flapping their way to the top of the tower, where they roost on the outer rim.
The bones of the corpse are allowed to remain for several days exposed to the fierce sun. Then they are thrown into a great central well, where the climate soon converts them into dust. This is washed by the rains into underground wells. Charcoal in these wells serves to filter the rain water before it enters the ground. Thus do the Parsees preserve even the earth from contamination by the ashes of the dead. No expense is spared by the Parsees in the construction of these towers of silence, which are always placed on the tops of hills. According to the testimony of some of the ablest medical men of England and America, who have examined these burial grounds, the Parsee method of disposing of the dead is the most sanitary that has ever been devised. It avoids even the fumes that are given off in cremation of the dead. It is also cheap and absolutely democratic, as the bones of the rich and poor mingle at last in the well of the tower of silence.
There is nothing offensive to European taste in the towers of silence except the vultures. These disgusting birds, like the Indian crow, are protected because they are admirable scavengers. The Parsees see nothing offensive in exposing their dead to these birds nor apparently does it shock them that alien hands should bare the bodies of their beloved dead; but to a foreigner both these aspects of Parsee burial are repellant and no argument has any weight to counteract this sentiment.
Many sensational accounts of these Parsee burial rites have been printed. Nearly every writer lays stress on the fact that pieces of the dead bodies are dropped by the vultures within the grounds or in the streets outside. This is an absurdity, as the vulture never rises on the wing with any carrion – he eats it on the spot and he will not leave until he is gorged to repletion. An effort was made several years ago to remove these towers of silence on Malabar hill because of complaints that fragments of corpses were found in the neighborhood. When two competent medical experts investigated the matter they reported that there was no foundation for the complaints. So the towers have remained and thousands of Parsees have been borne to them for the last rites of their creed.
EGYPT, THE HOME OF HIEROGLYPHS, TOMBS AND MUMMIES
Picturesque Oriental Life as Seen in Cairo
The first impression of Cairo is bewildering. None of the Oriental cities east of Port Said is at all like it in appearance or in street life. The color, the life, the picturesqueness, the noises, all these are distinctive. Kyoto, Manila, Hongkong, Singapore, Rangoon, Calcutta, Bombay and Colombo – each has marked traits that differentiate it from all other cities, but several have marked likenesses. Cairo differs from all these in having no traits in common with any of them. It stands alone as the most kaleidoscopic of cities, the most bizarre in its mingling of the Orient and the Occident.
Ismail Pasha, who loved to ape the customs of the foreigner, made a deliberate attempt to convert Cairo into a second Paris, by cutting great avenues through the narrow, squalid streets of the old city, but Ismail simply transformed a certain quarter of the place and spoiled its native character. What he could not do, fortunately, was to rob the Egyptian of his picturesqueness or make the chief city of Egypt other than a great collection of Oriental bazars and outdoor coffee shops, as full of the spirit of the East as the camel or the Bedouin of the desert.
The ride from Port Said to Cairo on the train, which consumes four hours, is interesting mainly as a revelation of what the Nile means to these people, who without its life-giving water would be unable to grow enough to live on. With abundant irrigation this Nile delta is one of the garden spots of the earth.
The villages that we pass remind one somewhat of old Indian villages on the fringe of the desert in California and Arizona – the same walls of sun-baked adobe; the roofs of any refuse from tree pruning; the goats and chickens on terms of intimacy with the single living-room. But the people are not of the Western world. Dressed in voluminous black or blue cotton robes, which are pulled up over their heads to protect them from the keen wind of winter, they belong to the land as absolutely as the tawny, dust-colored camel. The dress of the women appears to differ very little from that of the men, but always the women gather a loose fold of their dress and bring it over the head, thus partially concealing the face. Men, women and children, all in bare feet, squat in the sand or sit hunched up against the sunny side of their houses. Beyond any other Orientals I have seen, these Egyptians have the capacity for unlimited loafing under circumstances that would drive an American insane in a few hours. Flies swarm over them; passing donkeys or camels powder them with dust; the fierce sun beats down on their heads; but all these things they accept philosophically as an inevitable part of life, as something decreed by fate which it would be useless and senseless to change.
The first walk down the Street of the Camel in Cairo is one not soon forgotten. Before you are clear of the hotel steps an Arab in a sweater and loose skirt, something like the Malay sarong, rushes up and shouts: "The latest New York Herald; just came this morning!" Although you tell him "no" and shake your head, he follows you for half a block. Meanwhile you are badgered by dealers in scarabs, beads, stamps, postal cards, silver shawls and various curios, who dog your heels, and, when you finally lose your temper, retaliate by shouting: "Yankee!" through their noses. These street peddlers are wonderfully keen judges of nationality and they manage to make life a burden to the American tourist by their unwearied and smiling persistence. This is due in great part to the foolish liberality of American travelers, who are inclined to accept the first price offered, although with an Egyptian or an Arab this is usually twice or three times what he finally agrees to take.
Custom and habit probably blunt one's sensibilities in time, but this constant annoyance by peddlers detracts much from the pleasure of any stroll through Cairo streets. To the new arrival everything is novel and attractive. The main avenues are wide, well paved and lined with spacious sidewalks, but here the European touch ends. After passing some fine shops, their windows filled with costly goods from all parts of Egypt and the Soudan, one comes upon one of the great cafes that form a distinctive feature of Cairo street life. Here the sidewalk is half filled with small tables, about which are grouped Egyptians and foreigners drinking the sweet Turkish coffee that is served here at all hours of the day.
Many of these Egyptians are in European dress, their swarthy faces and the red fez alone showing their nationality. The young men are remarkably handsome, with fine, regular features, large, brilliant black eyes and straight, heavy eyebrows that frequently meet over the nose. Their faces beam with good nature and they evidently regard the frequent enjoyment of coffee and cigarettes as among the real pleasures of life. But the older men all show traces of this life of ease and self-indulgence. It is seldom that one sees a man beyond fifty with a strong face. The Egyptian over forty loses his fine figure, he lays on abundant flesh, his jowl is heavy and his whole face suggests satiety and the loss of that pleasure in mere existence that makes the youth so attractive.
Walking down this main artery of Cairo life one sees on the left a large park surrounded by a high iron fence. This is the Esbekiyeh Gardens, which cover twenty acres, and are planted to many choice trees and shrubs. They contain cafes, a restaurant and a theater, and on several evenings in the week military and Egyptian bands alternate in playing foreign music. Beyond the gardens is an imposing opera house, with a small square in front, ornamented with an impressive equestrian statue of old Ibrahim Pasha, one of the few good fighters that Egypt has produced. From the opera house radiate many streets, some leading to the new Europeanized quarters, with noble residences and great apartment houses; others taking one directly to the bazars and narrow streets that give a good idea of Cairo as it existed before the foreigner came to change its life.
Although the modern tram car clangs its way through these native streets, it is about the only foreign touch that can be seen. Everything else is distinctively Oriental. It is difficult to give any adequate idea of the narrowness of these streets or of the amount of life that is crowded into them. As in many cities of India, all the work of the shops goes on in plain view from the street. The shops themselves are mere cubicles, from eight to ten feet wide and seldom more than from six to eight feet deep. In certain streets the makers of shoes and slippers are massed in solid rows; then come the workers in brass and metals; then the jewelers, and following these may be dealers in shawls and in curios of various kinds. The native shopkeeper sits cross-legged amid his stock and, although he shows great keenness in getting you to examine his wares, he never reveals any haste in closing a bargain.
Shopping in this native quarter and in the great Muski bazar that adjoins it is a constant source of amusement to the foreign woman who has a fondness for bargaining. These Arabs and Egyptians never expect one to give more than half what is demanded, except in the case of a few large shops in which the price is marked. If one of the silver shawls made at Assiut attracts a lady's attention and the polite shopkeeper demands five pounds sterling, she may safely offer him two pounds, and then, after haggling for a half hour, she will probably become the possessor of the shawl for two pounds ten shillings. Of one thing the traveler may be sure: he will never get any article from an Egyptian on which the shopkeeper cannot make a small profit.
The Muski bazar is about a mile long and, although many European shops line it, the street still retains its Oriental attractiveness. Branching off from it are many narrow streets crowded with shops on both sides. Here may be seen the real life of Old Cairo, unhampered by any foreign innovations. The street is not more than twelve feet wide and above the first floor of the houses projecting latticed windows and open balconies reduce this width to three or four feet. Looking up one sees only a narrow slit of blue sky, against which are outlined several tiers of latticed windows. From these the harem women look down upon the street life in which they can have no real part. Peeping over the balconies may be seen black eyes that gleam above the yashmak or Oriental veil worn by the poorer classes. This veil covers the face almost to the eyes and it is held in place by a curious bit of bamboo that comes down over the forehead to the nose. The women of the better class do not wear this ugly yashmak, but content themselves with a white silk veil that is stretched across the lower part of the face, leaving the eyes and a part of the nose uncovered.
No visit to Cairo is complete without a sight of Old Cairo, with its bazars. This is a quarter of the city that remains as it was in the days of the Caliphs. It is inhabited mainly by Copts and among the mean houses, built of sun-dried bricks, may be traced part of the old Roman wall that encircled this suburb, then known as Babylon. The houses are mainly of two or three stories, but the streets are so narrow that two people on opposite sides may easily join hands by leaning out of their windows. Many or the antique doors of oak, studded with great wrought-iron nails, still remain. Here is the old church of St. Sergius, which is said to antedate the Moslem conquest. In the ancient crypt the Virgin Mary and the Child are said to have sought shelter after their flight into Egypt.
Near by is the island of Roda, which is noteworthy for the legend that here the infant Moses was found by Pharaoh's daughter. The visitor crosses a narrow arm of the Nile by a crude ferry and then walks through a quaint old garden to a wall that overlooks the Nile and the Pyramids. This wall marks the spot, according to local tradition, where Moses was taken from the bulrushes. The bulrushes are no more because they have been dredged out, but the place has the look of extreme age and the garden contains many curious trees.