on some Indian Vultures.



51



the banks of the Jumna River, and were detected when the glasses

were turned upon some plovers feeding there. Such ghastly finds

are not so surprising in a country teeming with millions of Hindus,

whose religion forbids the burying of the dead, and where the cost

of the wood for the funeral pyre is almost prohibitory for some

families.


On the morning of my visit to the bathing ghats of Benares

I witnessed two Hindu funerals ; the first was that of a woman, and

her nearest relative, after walking five times around the pyre, applied

the torch ; the other was that of an infant, whose body was weighted

with stones preparatory to its being cast into the Ganges, for this is

the disposal made of the bodies of Hindu children who die before

they have attained the age of three years. In this river were

hundreds of pious Hindus taking their sacred baths, energetically

scouring their teeth, or drinking the water dipped up by the hand.


The immense number of tombs to be seen outside of some

of the cities tends to create the feeling that India is one vast grave¬

yard, but these are Mohammedan tombs, showing the fruits of

death’s harvest for a few hundred years only. Another religious

sect, the Parsee, holds that the elements are too sacred to be polluted

by the dead, hence their bodies cannot be burned nor cast into the

water as are the Hindu’s, neither must they desecrate the earth by

burial therein. To obviate these things Towers of Silence are

provided on which the bodies of dead Parsees are exposed to the

vultures — the White-backed and the Long-billed are the species in

Bombay that are said to frequent these towers, there being about

three hundred birds that divide their time between the towers and

the slaughter-houses.


In Bombay the stated hours for funerals are nine o’clock

in the morning and five in the afternoon. The vultures begin to

assemble regularly an hour or two before funeral time. When I was

there at 3 p.m. from twenty to thirty birds had arrived and were

waiting on the walls. They are said to complete their task within

the space of two hours. There are five of the towers ; some have

private ownership; one is for criminals, suicides, and for the bodies

of the unfortunate Parsees that chance after death to be touched by

someone outside the caste. The principal tower is 25 feet high and



