modem Parsees have adopted the customs of the Hindoos; but 
their mode of treating the dead, seems to be peculiar to them- 
selves. At Bombay, soon after the decease, the body is conveyed 
to Malabar Hill, an eminence about three miles from the town; 
where are two large cemeteries, fifty or sixty feet in diameter, 
surrounded by circular walls, twenty feet high. Within this en- 
closure is a smooth pavement, sloping gradually from the side of 
the wall to the center, where it terminates in a deep pit, the bodies 
are laid on this pavement, which is divided into three distinct 
parts, for men, women, and children; they are exposed naked, to 
be devoured by vultures and birds of prey, which generally hover 
over them: a person is appointed to watch which of the eyes they 
first pluck out; as they annex some superstitious idea, respecting the 
happines or misery of the departed spirit from this circumstance: 
and the bones are afterwards deposited in the pit, to make room 
for others in this extraordinary mausoleum. When they are carry- 
ing the corpse to the tomb, which is a duty belonging to a parti- 
cular set of people, they must neither speak, nor touch wood; for 
which reason the body is laid upon an iron bier, and the draw- 
bridges at the town-gates, when they pass over them, are covered, 
either with sheets of copper, or with fresh earth. 
The Parsees are generally a tall comely race, athletic and well 
formed, and much fairer than the natives of Hindostan ; the 
women are celebrated more for chastity than cleanliness; the girls 
are delicate and pleasing, but the bloom of youth soon decays; 
before tweiity they grow coarse and masculine, in a far greater 
degree than either the Hindoos or Mahomedans. 
Wherever the Parsees settle throughout Hindostan, they build 
