Modern India by William Eleroy Curtis

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In a beautiful grove upon the top of a hill overlooking the city
of Bombay and the sea, surrounded by a high, ugly wall, are the
so-called Towers of Silence, upon which these hideous birds can
always be seen, waiting for their feast. They roost upon palm
trees in the neighborhood, and, often in their flight, drop pieces
of human flesh from their beaks or their talons, which lie rotting
in the fields below. An English lady driving past the Towers of
Silence was naturally horrified when the finger of a dead man
was dropped into her carriage by one of those awful birds; and
an army officer told me, that he once picked up by the roadside
the forearm and hand of a woman which had been torn from a body
only a few hours dead and had evidently fallen during a fight
between the birds. The reservoir which stores the water supply
of Bombay is situated upon the same hill, not more than half a
mile distant, and for obvious reasons had been covered with a
roof. Some years ago the municipal authorities, having had their
attention called to possible pollution of the water, notified
the Parsees that the Towers of Silence would have to be removed
to a distance from the city, but the rich members of that faith
preferred to pay the expense of roofing over the reservoir to
abandoning what to them is not only sacred but precious ground.
The human mind can adjust itself to almost any conditions and
associations, and a cultured Parsee will endeavor to convince
you by clever arguments that their method is not only humane and
natural, but the best sanitary method ever devised of disposing
of the dead.

Funeral ceremonies are held at the residence of the dead; prayers
are offered and eulogies are pronounced. Then a procession is
formed and the hearse is preceded by priests and followed by
the male members of the family and by friends. The body is not
placed in a coffin, but is covered with rich shawls and vestments.
When the gateway of the outer temple is reached, priests who
are permanently attached to the Towers of Silence and reside
within the inclosure, meet the procession and take charge of
the body, which is first carried to a temple, where prayers are
offered, and a sacred fire, kept continually burning there, is
replenished. While the friends and mourners are engaged in worship,
Nasr Salars, as the attendants are called, take the bier to the
ante-room of one of the towers. There are five, of circular shape,
with walls forty feet high, perfectly plain, and whitewashed.
The largest is 276 feet in circumference and cost $150,000. The
entrance is about fifteen or twenty feet from the ground and is
reached by a flight of steps. The inside plan of the building
resembles a circular gridiron gradually depressed toward the
center, at which there is a pit, five feet in diameter. From
this pit cement walks radiate like the spokes of a wheel, and
between them are three series of compartments extending around
the entire tower. Those nearest the center are about four feet
long, two feet wide and six inches deep. The next series are a
little larger, and the third, larger still, and they are intended
respectively for men, women and children.

When the bearers have brought the body into the anteroom of the
tower they strip it entirely of its clothing. Valuable coverings
are carefully laid away and sent to the chamber of purification,
where they are thoroughly fumigated, and afterward returned to
the friends. The cotton wrappings are burned. The body is laid
in one of the compartments entirely naked, and in half an hour
the flesh is completely stripped from the bones by voracious
birds that have been eagerly watching the proceedings from the
tops of the tall palms that overlook the cemetery. There are
about two hundred vultures around the place; most of them are
old birds and are thoroughly educated. They know exactly what
to expect, and behave with greatest decorum. They never enter
the tower until the bearers have left it, and usually are as
deliberate and solemn in their movements as a lot of undertakers.
But sometimes, when they are particularly hungry, their greed
gets the better of their dignity and they quarrel and fight over
their prey.

After the bones are stripped they are allowed to lie in the sun
and bleach and decay until the compartment they occupy is needed
for another body, when the Nasr Salars enter with gloves and
tongs and cast them into the central pit, where they finally
crumble into dust. The floor of the tower is so arranged that all
the rain that falls upon it passes into the pit, and the moisture
promotes decomposition. The bottom of the pit is perforated and
the water impregnated with the dust from the bones is filtered
through charcoal and becomes thoroughly disinfected before it
is allowed to pass through a sewer into the bay. The pits are
the receptacles of the dust of generations, and I am told that
so much of it is drained off by the rainfall, as described, that
they have never been filled. The carriers are not allowed to
leave the grounds, and when a man engages in that occupation
he must retire forever from the world, as much as if he were
a Trappist monk. Nor can he communicate with anyone except the
priests who have charge of the temple.

The grounds are beautifully laid out. No money or labor has been
spared to make them attractive, and comfortable benches have
been placed along the walks where relatives and friends may sit
and converse or meditate after the ceremonies are concluded.
The Parsees are firm believers in the resurrection, and they
expect their mutilated bodies to rise again glorified and
incorruptible. The theory upon which their peculiar custom is
based is veneration for the elements. Fire is the chief object
of their worship, and they cannot allow it to be polluted by
burning the dead; water is almost as sacred, and the soil of
the earth is the source of their food, their strength and almost
everything that is beautiful. Furthermore, they believe in the
equality of all creatures before God, and hence the dust of the
rich and the poor mingles in the pit.

Parsee temples are very plain and the form of worship is extremely
simple. None but members of the faith are admitted. The interior
of the temple is almost empty, except for a reading desk occupied
by the priest. The walls are without the slightest decoration and
are usually whitewashed. The sacred fire, the emblem of spiritual
life, which is never extinguished, is kept in a small recess
in a golden receptacle, and is attended by priests without
interruption. They relieve each other every two hours, but the
fire is never left alone.

The Mohammedans have many mosques in Bombay, but none of them
is of particular interest. The Hindu or Brahmin temples are also
commonplace, with two exceptions. One of them, known as the Monkey
Temple, is covered with carved images of monkeys and other animals.
There are said to be 300 of them, measuring from six inches to
two feet in height. The other is the "Walkeshwar," dedicated to
the "Sand Lord" occupying a point upon the shore of the bay not
far from the water. It has been a holy place for many centuries.
The legend says that not long after the creation of the world
Rama, one of the most powerful of the gods, while on his way
to Ceylon to recover Stia, his bride, who had been kidnaped,
halted and camped there for a night and went through various
experiences which make a long and tedious story, but of profound
interest to Hindu theologians and students of mythology. The
temple is about 150 years old, but does not compare with those
in other cities of India. It is surrounded by various buildings
for the residence of the Brahmins, lodging places for pilgrims
and devotees, which are considered excellent examples of Hindu
architecture. Several wealthy families have cottages on the grounds
which they occupy for a few days each year on festival occasions
or as retreats.

[Illustration: BODY READY FOR THE FUNERAL PYRE--BOMBAY BURNING
GHATS]

Upon the land side of the boulevard which skirts the shore of
the bay, not far from the university of Bombay, is the burning
ghat of the Hindus, where the bodies of their dead are cremated
in the open air and in a remarkably rude and indifferent manner.
The proceedings may be witnessed by any person who takes the
trouble to visit the place and has the patience to wait for the
arrival of a body. It is just as public as a burial in any cemetery
in the United States. Bodies are kept only a few hours after
death. Those who die at night are burned the first thing in the
morning, so that curious people are usually gratified if they
visit the place early. Immediately after a poor Hindu sufferer
breathes his last the family retire and professional undertakers
are brought in. The latter bathe the body carefully, dress it
in plain white cotton cloth, wrap it in a sheet, with the head
carefully concealed, place it upon a rude bier made of two bamboo
poles and cross pieces, with a net work of ropes between, and
four men, with the ends of the poles on their shoulders, start
for the burning ghat at a dog trot, singing a mournful song.
Sometimes they are followed by the sons or the brothers of the
deceased, who remain through the burning to see that it is properly
done, but more often that duty is entrusted to an employe or a
servant or some humble friend of the family in whom they have
confidence. Arriving at the burning ghat, negotiations are opened
with the superintendent or manager, for they are usually private
enterprises or belong to corporations and are conducted very
much like our cemeteries. The cheapest sort of fire that can be
provided costs two rupees, which is sixty-six cents in American
money, and prices range from that amount upwards according to the
caste and the wealth of the family. When a rich man's body is
burned sandal-wood and other scented fuel is used and sometimes
the fire is very expensive. After an agreement is reached coolies
employed on the place make a pile of wood, one layer pointing
one way and the next crossed at right angles, a hole left in
the center being filled with kindling and quick-burning reeds.
The body is lifted from the bier and placed upon it, then more
wood is piled on and the kindling is lit with a torch. If there
is plenty of dry fuel the corpse is reduced to ashes in about
two hours. Usually the ashes are claimed by friends, who take
them to the nearest temple and after prayers and other ceremonies
cast them into the waters of the bay.

The death rate in Bombay is very large. The bubonic plague prevails
there with a frightful mortality. Hence cremation is safer than
burial. In the province of Bombay the total deaths from all diseases
average about 600,000 a year, and you can calculate what an enormous
area would be required for cemeteries. In 1900, on account of
the famine, the deaths ran up to 1,318,783, and in 1902 they
were more than 800,000. Of these 128,259 were from the plague,
13,600 from cholera, 5,340 from smallpox, and 2,212 from other
contagious diseases. Hence the burning ghats were very useful,
for at least 80 percent of the dead were Brahmins and their bodies
were disposed of in that way.

It is difficult to give an accurate idea of Brahminism in a brief
manner, but theoretically it is based upon the principles set
forth in a series of sacred books known as the Vedas, written
about 4,000 years ago. Its gods were originally physical forces
and phenomena--nature worship,--which was once common to all
men, the sun, fire, water, light, wind, the procreative and
productive energies and the mystery of sex and birth, which impressed
with wonder and awe the mind of primitive humanity. As these
deities became more and more vague and indefinite in the popular
mind, and the simple, instinctive appeal of the human soul to
a Power it could not see or comprehend was gradually debased
into what is now known as Brahminism, and the most repugnant,
revolting, cruel, obscene and vicious rites ever practiced by
savages or barbarians. There is nothing in the Vedas to justify
the cruelties of the Hindu gods and the practices of the priests.
They do not authorize animal worship, caste, child-marriage,
the burning of widows or perpetual widowhood, but the Brahmins
have built up a stupendous system of superstition, of which they
alone pretend to know the mystic meaning, and their supremacy is
established. Thus the nature worship of the Vedas has disappeared
and has given place to terrorism, demon worship, obscenity, and
idolatry.

The three great gods of the Hindus are Siva, Vishnu and Brahma,
with innumerable minor deities, some 30,000,000 altogether, which
have been created during emergencies from time to time by worshipers
of vivid imaginations. When we speak of Hinduism or Brahminism as
a religion, however, it is only a conventional use of a term,
because it is not a religion in the sense that we are accustomed
to apply that word. In all other creeds there is an element of
ethics; morality, purity, justice and faith in men, but none of
these qualities is taught by the Brahmins. With them the fear
of unseen powers and the desire to obtain their favor is the
only rule of life and the only maxim taught to the people. And
it is the foundation upon which the influence and power of the
Brahmins depend. The world and all its inhabitants are at the
mercy of cruel, fickle and unjust gods; the gods are under the
influence of the Brahmins; hence the Brahmins are holy men and
must be treated accordingly. No Hindu will offend a Brahmin under
any circumstances, lest his curse may call down all forms of
misfortune. A Hindu proverb says:

"What is in the Brahmin's books, that is in the Brahmin's heart.
Neither you nor I knew there was so much evil in the world."

The power of the priests or Brahmins over the Hindus is one of
the phenomena of India. I do not know where you can get a better
idea of their influence and of the reverence that is paid to
them than in "Kim," Rudyard Kipling's story of an Irish boy who
was a disciple of an old Thibetan lama or Buddhist monk. That
story is appreciated much more keenly by people who have lived
or traveled in India, because it appeals to them. There is a
familiar picture on every page, and it is particularly valuable
as illustrating the relations between the Brahmins and the people.
"These priests are invested," said one of the ablest writers on
Indian affairs, "with a reverence which no extreme of abject
poverty, no infamy of private conduct can impair, and which is
beyond anything that a mind not immediately conversant with the
fact can conceive. They are invariably addressed with titles of
divinity, and are paid the highest earthly honors. The oldest
and highest members of other castes implore the blessing of the
youngest and poorest of theirs; they are the chosen recipients
of all charities, and are allowed a license in their private
relations which would be resented as a deadly injury in any but
themselves."

This reverence is largely due to superstitions which the Brahmins
do their best to cultivate and encourage. There are 30,000,000
gods in the Hindu pantheon, and each attends to the affairs of his
own particular jurisdiction. Most of them are wicked, cruel and
unkind, and delight in bringing misfortunes upon their devotees,
which can only be averted by the intercession of a priest. Gods and
demons haunt every hill and grove and gorge and dark corner. Their
names are usually unknown, but they go on multiplying as events
or incidents occur to which the priests can give a supernatural
interpretation. These gods are extremely sensitive to disrespect
or neglect, and unless they are constantly propitiated they will
bring all sorts of disasters. The Brahmin is the only man who
knows how to make them good-natured. He can handle them exactly
as he likes, and they will obey his will. Hence the superstitious
peasants yield everything, their money, their virtue, their lives,
as compensation for the intercession of the priests in their
behalf.

The census of 1901 returned 2,728,812 priests, which is an average
of one for every seventy-two members of the Hindu faith, and
it is believed that, altogether, there are more than 9,000,000
persons including monks, nuns, ascetics, fakirs, sorcerers, chelas,
and mendicants or various kinds and attendants employed about
the temples who are dependent upon the public for support. A
large part of the income of the pious Hindu is devoted to the
support of priests and the feeding of pilgrims. Wherever you
see it, wherever you meet it, and especially when you come in
contact with it as a sightseer, Brahminism excites nothing but
pity, indignation and abhorrence.

Buddhism is very different, although Buddha lived and died a
Hindu, and the members of that sect still claim that he was the
greatest, the wisest and the best of all Brahmins. No two religions
are so contradictory and incompatible as that taught by Buddha and
the modern teachings of the Brahmins. The underlying principles of
Buddha's faith are love, charity, self-sacrifice, unselfishness,
universal brotherhood and spiritual and physical purity. He believed
in none of the present practices of the Hindu priests. There is
a striking resemblance between the teachings of Buddha and the
teachings of Christ. Passages in the New Testament, reporting
the words of the Savior, seem like plagiarisms from the maxims of
Buddha, and, indeed, Buddhist scholars tell of a myth concerning
a young Jew who about five centuries after Buddha, and twenty
centuries ago, came from Syria with a caravan and spent several
years under instruction in a Buddhist monastery in Thibet. Thus
they account for the silence of the scriptures concerning the
doings of Christ between the ages of 12 and 20, and for the
similarity between his sermons and those preached by the founder
of their religion. Buddha taught that good actions bring happiness
and bad actions misery; that selfishness is the cause of sin,
sorrow and suffering, and that the abolition of self, sacrifices
for others and the suppression of passions and desires is the
only true plan of salvation. He died 543 years before Jesus was
born, and within the next two centuries his teachings were accepted
by two-thirds of the people of India, but by the tenth century
of our era they had been forgotten, and a great transformation
had taken place among the Indo-Ayran races, who began to worship
demons instead of angels and teach fear instead of hope, until
now there are practically no Buddhists in India with the exception
of the Burmese, who are almost unanimous in the confession of
that faith. It is a singular phenomenon that Buddhism should
so disappear from the land of its birth, although 450,000,000
of the human race still turn to its founder with pure affection
as the wisest of teachers and the noblest of ideals.

The teachings of Buddha survive in a sect known as the Jains,
founded by Jina, or Mahavira, a Buddhist priest, about a thousand
years ago, as a protest against the cruel encroachments of the
Hindus. Jina was a Perfect One, who subdued all worldly desires;
who lived an unselfish life, practiced the golden rule, harmed
no living thing, and attained the highest aim of the soul, right
knowledge, right conduct, temperance, sobriety, chastity and a
Holy Calm.

There are now 1,334,148 Jains in India, and among them are the
wealthiest, most highly cultured and most charitable of all people.
They carry their love of life to extremes. A true believer will
not harm an insect, not even a mosquito or a flea. All Hindus
are kind to animals, except when they ill treat them through
ignorance, as is often the case. The Brahmins represent that
murder, robbery, deception and every other form of crime and
vice may be committed in the worship of their gods. They teach
that the gods themselves are guilty of the most hideous depravity,
and that the sacrifice of wives, children, brothers, sisters
and friends to convenience or expediency for selfish ends is
justifiable. Indeed, the British government has been compelled to
interfere and prohibit the sacrifice of human life to propitiate
the Hindu gods. It has suppressed the thugs, who, as you have
read, formerly went about the country killing people in order
to acquire holiness; it has prohibited the awful processions
of the car of Juggernaut, before which hysterical fanatics used
to throw their own bodies, and the bodies of their children, to
be crushed under the iron wheels, in the hope of pleasing some
monster among their deities. The suppression of infanticide,
which is still encouraged by the Brahmins, is now receiving the
vigilant attention of the authorities.

Every effort has been made during the last fifty years to prevent
the awful cruelties to human beings that formerly were common in
Hindu worship, but no police intervention has ever been necessary
to protect dumb animals; nobody was ever punished for cruelty to
them; on the contrary, animal worship is one of the most general
of practices among the Hindus, and many beasts and reptiles are
sacred. But the Jains go still further and establish hospitals
for aged and infirm animals. You can see them in Bombay, in Delhi,
Lucknow, Calcutta and other places where the Jains are strong.
Behind their walls may be found hundreds of decrepit horses,
diseased cows and bullocks, many dogs and cats and every kind of
sick, lame and infirm beast. Absurd stories are told strangers
concerning the extremes to which this benevolence is carried,
and some of them have actually appeared in published narratives
of travel in India. One popular story is that when a flea lights
upon the body of a Jain he captures it carefully, puts it in
a receptacle and sends it to an asylum where fat coolies are
hired to sit around all day and night and allow fleas, mosquitoes
and other insects to feed upon them. But although untrue, these
ridiculous stories are valuable as illustrating the principles
in which the Jains believe. They are strict vegetarians. The
true believers will not kill an animal or a fish or a bird, or
anything that breathes, for any purpose, and everybody can see
that they strictly practice what they preach.

His most gracious majesty, King of Great Britain and Ireland and
Emperor of India, has more Mohammedan subjects than the Great
Turk or any other ruler. They numbered 62,458,061 at the last
census. They are a clean, manly, honorable and industrious portion
of the population. Commercially they do not rank as high as the
Parsees, who number only 94,190, or the Jains, who number 1,334,148,
but are vastly superior to the Hindus from any point of view.
They are not so ignorant nor so filthy nor so superstitious nor
so submissive to their priests. They are self-respecting and
independent, and while the believers in no other creed are more
scrupulous in the performance of their religious duties, they
are not in any measure under the control or the dictation of
their mullahs. They have their own schools, called kuttebs, they
take care of their own poor very largely; drunkenness and gambling
are very rare among them. They are hospitable, kind to animals
and generous. The difference between the Mohammedans and the
Hindus may be seen in the most forcible manner in their temples.
It is an old saying that while one god created all men, each
man creates his own god, and that is strikingly true among the
ignorant, superstitious people of the East. The Hindu crouches in
a shadow to escape the attention of his god, while the Mohammedan
publicly prays to his five times a day in the nearest mosque,
and if no mosque is near he kneels where he stands, and takes
full satisfaction in a religion of hope instead of fear.

From the political standpoint the Mohammedans are a very important
factor in the situation in India. They are more independent than the
Hindus; they occupy a more influential position than their numbers
entitle them to; they have most profound pride in their religion
and race, and in their social and intellectual superiority, and
the more highly they are educated the more manly, self-reliant and
independent they become, and the feeling between the Mohammedans
and the Hindus is bitterly hostile. So much so as to make them
a bulwark of the government. Several authorities told me that
Mohammedans make the best officials in the service and can be
trusted farther than any other class, but, speaking generally,
Islam has been corrupted and debased in India just as it has
been everywhere else.

One of the results of this corruption is the sect known as Sikhs,
which numbers about 2,195,268. It thrives best in the northern
part of India, and furnishes the most reliable policemen and
the best soldiers for the native army. The Sikhs retain much
that is good among the teachings of Mohammed, but have a bible
of their own, called the Abi-granth, made up of the sermons of
Nanak, the founder of the sect, who died in the year 1530. It
is full of excellent moral precepts; it teaches the brotherhood
of man, the equality of the sexes; it rejects caste, and embraces
all of the good points in Buddhism, with a pantheism that is
very confusing. It would seem that the Sikhs worship all gods
who are good to men, and reject the demonology of the Hindus.
They believe in one Supreme Being, with attributes similar to the
Allah of the Mohammedans, and recognize Mohammed as his prophet
and exponent of his will. They have also adopted several Hindu
deities in a sort of indirect way, although the Sikhs strictly
prohibit idolatry. Their worship is pure and simple. Their temples
are houses of prayer, where they, meet, sing hymns, repeat a
ritual and receive pieces of "karah prasad," a consecrated pastry,
which means "the effectual offering." They are tolerant, and
not only admit strangers to their worship, but invite them to
participate in their communion.

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