12544037 - Tower of Silence, vultures devour the Parsi de...

Victorian Stereoview card from circa 1900 India through the stereoscope.1903 historic social history images. Tower of Silence, Vultures devour the Parsi dead.Malabar Hill, Bombay You arc looking N.E. from grounds near the road round Malabar Hill. The seashore is a short distance behind you; the city of Bombay is beyond the hill, a little to the right of the direction in which you are facing. In this neighborhood there are a good many fine estates, the homes of wealthy Parsis, descendants, not of old Indian stock, but of the Persian. Their ancestors became refugees from the home country up north, when Persia was conquered by the Mohammedans nine hundred years ago. They are followers of Zoroaster, believing in one God and regarding the elements, earth, air, fire and water, as sacred symbols of the divine. The Sun is regarded by them as the most nearly perfect symbol of Divinity, and they guard in a temple near here a sacred fire which has never been allowed to go out in 800 years. You see that circular tower yonder with snow- white walls twenty-five feet high. Those black things on the edge of the wall are vultures, watching and waiting. There goes another great black fellow flying over at this moment with broad, flapping wings, to join them before it is too late. Only a few minutes more and a procession may very likely move along one of the paths over beyond that shrubbery. First will go four bearers carrying a burden draped with pure white, then priests and mourners. The eager black creatures up there on the rim of the Tower will growâ€™ excited as the procession draws near When the burden reaches that white wall two attendants will bear inside that roofless Tower and up the stairs something still and white. The black wings will then begin to soar and circle around and round just above the walls. Inside the Tower in a circular grating and on that grating the burden is to be reverently laid. The bearers will come back down the stairs to the sunshiny garden, and then all the flapping wings will descend like a black cloud into the Tower. . .

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Credit: © John Short / Design Pics

Image Reference: 12544037

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