358. The Better Heathenism

The Better Heathenism

Mat_2:1 : ’93There came wise men from the East to Jerusalem.’94

These wise men were the Parsees, or the so-called fire-worshipers, and I found their descendants in India last October. Their heathenism is more tolerable than any of the other false religions, and has more alleviations.

The prophet of the Parsees was Zoroaster of Persia. He was a poet and philosopher and reformer, as well as religionist. His disciples thrived at first in Persia, but under Mohammedan persecution, they retreated to India, where I met them, and in addition to what I saw of them at their headquarters in Bombay, India, I had two weeks of association with one of the most learned and genial of their people on shipboard from Bombay to Brindisi.

The bible of the Parsee, or fire-worshipers, as they are inaccurately called, is the Zend-Avesta, a collection of the strangest books that ever came into my hands. There were originally twenty-one volumes, but Alexander the Great, in a drunken fit set fire to a palace which contained some of them, and they went into ashes and forgetfulness. But there are more of their sacred volumes left than most people would have patience to read. There are many things in the religion of the Parsees that suggest Christianity, and some of its doctrines are in accord with our own religion.

Zoroaster, who lived about fourteen hundred years before Christ, was a good man, suffered persecution for his faith, and was assassinated while worshiping at an altar. He propounded the theory ’93He is best who is pure of heart!’94 and that there are two great spirits in the world, Ormuzd, the good spirit, and Ahriman, the bad spirit, and that all who do right are under the influence of Ormuzd, and all who do wrong are under Ahriman: that the Parsee must be born on the ground floor of the house, and must be buried from the ground floor; that the dying man must have prayers said over him and a sacred juice given him to drink; that the good at their decease go into eternal light, and the bad into eternal darkness; that having passed out of this life the soul lingers near the corpse three days in a paradisiac state, enjoying more than all the nations of earth put together could enjoy, or in a pan-demoniac state suffering more than all the nations put together could possibly suffer, but at the end of three days departing for its final destiny; and that there will be a resurrection of the body.

They are more careful than any other people about their ablutions, and they wash and wash and wash. They pay great attention to physical health, and it is a rare thing to see a sick Parsee. They do not smoke tobacco for they consider that a misuse of fire. At the close of mortal life the soul appears at the Bridge Chinvat where an angel presides, and questions the soul about the thoughts and words and deeds of its earthly state. Nothing, however, is more intense in the Parsee faith than the theory that the dead body is impure. A devil is supposed to take possession of the dead body. All who touch it are unclean, and hence the strange style of obsequies. But here I must give three or four questions and answers from one of the Parsee catechisms: Question: Who is the most fortunate man in the world?

Answer: He who is the most innocent.

Question: Who is the most innocent man in the world?

Answer: He who walks in the path of God and shuns that of the devil.

Question: Which is the path of God, and which that of the devil?

Answer: Virtue is the path of God, and vice that of the devil.

Question: What constitutes virtue, and what vice?

Answer: Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds constitute virtue; and evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds constitute vice.

Question: What constitutes good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, and evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds?

Answer: Honesty; charity, and truthfulness constitute the former; and dishonesty, want of charity, and falsehood constitute the latter.

And now the better to show you these Parsees, I tell you of two things I saw in Bombay, India. It was an afternoon of contrast. We started for Malabar Hill, on which the wealthy classes have their embowered homes, and where the Parsees have their strange Temple of the Dead. As we rode along the waters edge the sun was descending the sky, and a disciple of Zoroaster, a Parsee, was in lowly posture and with reverential gaze looking into the sky. He would have been said to have been worshiping the sun, as all Parsees are said to worship the fire. But the intelligent Parsee does not worship the fire. He looks upon the sun as the emblem of the warmth and light of the Creator. Looking at a blaze of light, whether on hearth, on mountain height, or in the sky, he can more easily bring to mind the glory of God; at least, so the Parsees tell me. Indeed, they are the pleasantest heathen I have met. They treat their wives as equals, while the Hindoos and Buddhists treat them as cattle; although the cattle and sheep and swine are better off than most of the women of India. This Parsee on the roadside on our way to Malabar Hill, was the only one of that religion I had ever seen engaged in worship. Who knows but that beyond the light of the sun on which he gazes he may catch a glimpse of the God who is light, and ’93in whom there is no darkness at all’94?

We passed on up through gates into the garden that surrounds the place where the Parsees dispose of their dead. This garden was given by Jamsetjee, and is beautiful with flowers of all hues, and foliage of all kinds of vein and notch and stature. There is on all sides great opulence of fern and cypress. The garden is one hundred feet above the level of the sea. Not far from the entrance is a building where the mourners of the funeral procession go in to pray. A light is here kept burning year in and year out. We ascend the garden by some eight stone steps. The body of a deceased aged woman was being carried in toward the chief ’93Tower of Silence.’94 There are five of these towers. Several of them have not been used for a long while. Four persons, whose business it is to do this, carry in the corpse. They are followed by two men with long beards. The Tower of Silence, to which they come, cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and is twenty-five feet high, and two hundred and seventy-six feet around, and without a roof. The four carriers of the dead and the two bearded men come to the door of the tower, enter and leave the dead. There are three rows of places for the dead: the outer row for the men; the middle row for the women; the inside row for the children. The lifeless bodies are left exposed as far down as the waist. As soon as the employees retire from the Tower of Silence, the vultures, now one, now two, now many, swoop upon the lifeless form. These vultures fill the air with their discordant voices. We saw them in long rows on the top of the whitewashed wall of the Tower of Silence. In a few minutes they have taken the last particle of flesh from the bones. There had evidently been other opportunities for them that day, and some flew away as though surfeited. They sometimes carry away with them parts of a body, and it is no unusual thing for the gentlemen in their country-seats to have dropped into their dooryards a fragment of flesh from the Tower of Silence.

In the centre of this tower is a well, into which the bones are thrown after they are bleached. The hot sun, and the rainy season, and charcoal do their work of disintegration and disinfection, and then there are sluices that carry into the sea what remains of the dead. The wealthy people of Malabar Hill have made strenuous efforts to have these strange towers removed as a nuisance; but they remain, and will no doubt for ages remain.

I talked with a learned Parsee about these mortuary customs. He said, ’93I suppose you consider them very peculiar, but the fact is we Parsees reverence the elements of nature, and cannot consent to defile them. We reverence the fire, and therefore will not ask it to burn our dead. We reverence the water, and do not ask it to submerge our dead. We reverence the earth, and will not ask it to bury our dead. And so we let the vultures take them away.’94 He confirmed me in the theory that the Parsees act on the principle that the dead are unclean. No one must touch such a body. The carriers of this ’93Tomb of Silence’94 must not put their hands on the form of the departed. They wear gloves lest somehow they should be contaminated. When the bones are to be removed from the sides of the tower and put in the well at the centre, they are touched carefully by tongs.

Then these people beside have very decided theories about the democracy of the tomb. No such thing as caste among the dead. Philosopher and boor, the affluent and the destitute must go through the same ’93Tower of Silence,’94 lie down side by side with other occupants, have their bodies dropped into the same abyss, and be carried out through the same canal and float away on the same sea. No splendor of necropolis. No sculpturing of mausoleum. No pomp of dome or obelisk. Zoroaster’92s teaching resulted in these ’93Towers of Silence.’94 He wrote: ’93Naked you came into the world, and naked you must go out.’94

As I stood at the close of day in that garden on Malabar Hill and heard the flap of the vultures’92 wings coming from their repast, the funeral custom of the Parsees seemed horrible beyond compare, and yet the dissolution of the human body by any mode is awful, and the beaks of these fowl are probably no more repulsive than the worms of the body devouring the sacred human form in cemeteries. Nothing but the Resurrection Day can undo the awful work of death, whether it now be put out of sight by cutting spade or flying wing.

Starting homeward, we soon were in the heart of the city, and saw a building all a-flash with lights and resounding with merry voices. It was a Parsee wedding, in a building erected especially for the marriage ceremony. We came to the door and proposed to go in, but at first were not permitted. They saw we were not Parsees, and that we were not even natives. So very politely they halted us on the doorstep. This temple of nuptials was chiefly occupied by women, their ears, and necks, and hands a-flame with jewels, or imitations of jewels. By pantomime and gesture, as we had no use of their vocabulary, we told them we were strangers and were curious to see by what process Parsees were married. Gradually we worked our way inside the door. The building and the surroundings were illumined by hundreds of candles in glasses and lanterns, in unique and grotesque holdings. Conversation ran high, and laughter bubbled over, and all was gay. Then there was a sound of an advancing band of music, but the instruments for the most part were strange to our ears and eyes.

Louder and louder were the outside voices, and the wind and stringed instruments, until the procession halted at the door of the temple and the bridegroom mounted the steps. Then the music ceased, and all the voices were still. The mother of the bridegroom, with a platter loaded with aromatics and articles of food, confronted her son and began to address him. Then she took from the platter a bottle of perfume and sprinkled his face with the redolence. All the while speaking in a droning tone, she took from the platter a handful of rice, throwing some of it on his head, spilling some of it on his shoulder, pouring some of it on his hands. She took from the platter a cocoanut and waved it about his head. She lifted a garland of flowers and threw it over his neck, and a bouquet of flowers and put it in his hand. Her part of the ceremony completed, the band resumed its music, and through another door the bridegroom was conducted into the centre of the building.

The bride was in the room, but there was nothing to designate her. ’93Where is the bride?’94 I said, ’93where is the bride?’94 After a while she was made evident. The bride and groom were seated on chairs opposite each other. A white curtain was dropped between them so that they could not see each other. Then the attendants put their arms under this curtain, took a long rope of linen and wound it around the neck of the bride and the groom in token that they were to be bound together for life. Then some silk strings were wound around the couple, now around this one, and now around that. Then the groom threw a handful of rice across the curtain on the head of the bride, and the bride responded by throwing a handful of rice across the curtain on the head of the groom. Thereupon the curtain dropped and the bride’92s chair was removed and put beside that of the groom. Then a priest of the Parsee religion arose and faced the couple. Before the priest was placed a platter of rice. He began to address the young man and woman. We could not hear a word, but we understood just as well as if we had heard. Ever and anon he punctuated his ceremony by a handful of rice, which he picked up from the platter and flung now toward the groom and now toward the bride. The ceremony went on interminably. We wanted to hear the conclusion, but were told that the ceremony would go on for a long while; indeed, that it would not conclude until two o’92clock in the morning, and this was only between seven and eight o’92clock in the evening. There would be a recess after awhile in the ceremony, but it would be taken up again in earnest at half-past twelve. We enjoyed what we had seen, but felt incapacitated for six more hours of wedding ceremony. Silently wishing the couple a happy life in each other’92s companionship, we pressed our way through the throng of congratulatory Parsees. All of them seemed bright and appreciative of the occasion. The streets outside joyously sympathized with the transactions inside.

We rode on toward our hotel wishing that marriage in all India might be as much honored as in the ceremony we had that evening witnessed at the Parsee wedding. The Hindu women are not so married. They are simply cursed into the conjugal relation. They can never go forth into the sunlight with their faces uncovered. They must stay at home. All descriptions of maltreatment are theirs. If they become Christians they become outcasts. A missionary told me in India of a Hindu woman who became a Christian. She had nine children. Her husband was over seventy years of age. And yet at her Christian baptism he told her to go, and she went out, homeless. As long as woman is down, India will be down. No nation was ever elevated except through the elevation of woman. Parsee marriage is an improvement on Hindu marriage; but Christian marriage is an improvement on Parsee marriage.

A fellow-traveler in India told me he had been writing to his home in England trying to get a law passed that no white woman could be legally married in India, until she had been there six months. Admirable law would that be! If a white woman saw what married life with a Hindu is she would never undertake it. Off with the thick and ugly veil from woman’92s face! Off with the crushing burdens from her shoulder! Nothing but the Gospel of Jesus Christ will ever make life in India what it ought to be.

But what an afternoon of contrast in Bombay we experienced! From the Temple of Silence to the Temple of Hilarity! From the vultures to the doves! From mourning to laughter! From gathering shadows to gleaming lights! From obsequies to wedding! But how much of all our lives is made up of such opposites. I have carried in the same pocket, and read from them in the same hour, the liturgy of the dead and the ceremony of espousals. And so the tear meets the smile, and the dove meets the vulture.

Thus I have set before you the best of all the religions of the heathen world, and I have done so in order that you might come to higher appreciation of the glorious religion which has put its benediction over us and over Christendom. Compare the absurdities and mummeries of heathen marriage with the plain, ’93I will,’94 of Christian marriage, the hands joined in pledge ’93till death do you part.’94 Compare the doctrine that the dead may not be touched, with as sacred and tender and loving a kiss as is ever given, the last kiss of lips that never again will speak to us. Compare the narrow Bridge Chinvari over which the departing Parsee soul must tremblingly cross, to the wide-open gate of heaven through which the departing Christian soul may triumphantly enter. Compare the twenty-one books of the Zend-Avesta of the Parsee which even the scholars of the earth despair of understanding, with our Bible, so much of it as is necessary for our salvation in language so plain that ’93a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein.’94 Compare the ’93Tower of Silence’94 with its vultures, at Bombay, with the ’93Greenwood of Brooklyn,’94 with its sculptured angels of resurrection. And bow yourselves in thanksgiving and prayer as you realize that if at the battles of Marathon and Salamis, Persia had triumphed over Greece, instead of Greece triumphing over Persia, Parseeism, which was the national religion of Persia, might have covered the earth, and you and I, instead of sitting in the noonday light of our glorious Christianity might have been groping in the depressing shadows of Parseeism, a religion as inferior to that which is our inspiration in life, and our hope in death, as Zoroaster of Persia was inferior to our radiant and superhuman Christ, to whom be honor and glory and dominion and victory and song, world without end. Amen.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage