Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/228



The Zoroastrians are forbidden by their religion to burn or bury their dead, or to consign them to the rivers, lest the sacred elements, fire, earth, and water, should in any way be defiled. Their sacred books enjoin upon them to expose corpses upon a "dakhmah," or Tower of Silence, to be devoured by the fowls of the air. The bones denuded of the flesh soon crumble it, to dust beneath the parching tropical sun. At Bombay these vulture-haunted foyers stand in a beautiful garden of waving palms on Malabar Hill, overlooking the city.