Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1890-02-21

palace fn which TO be burned The aver
age cremation takes place on a pile 81
wood laid cross ways, and after 30 IS oVsE
the bones are gathered up and tied up "a
a rag to be kept as relics. The most hor-
FlbIe OF funerals are those of the very
poor Of Bangkok. The bodies Cf these
are taken to a temple known as the Wat
Sab Kate. Imagine an Enclosure Of many
acres, filed with bushes and whispering
palms, at the feet Of which are piles Of
collins, and along the roots Of which
skulls are lying. Enter this garden path
if you dare. There are no men to stop
you, AMI you wander in and out through
the trees snarled at by lean, hungry look
ing dogs, until at last you come to
number of low brick buildings. Here
you VIII meet lean, t0othless,
parchment-sk skinned old bag who has
OF Chester white pig, and who
smiles at you through her tcOthiess
gums, and with long, withersd fingers
beckOns you IN. / remember her we'll,
and L still see her in my dreams. Vul-
lures by the hundreds sit upon the trees
over her, and as you so in you hear the
snarling Of dogs. YouloOk toward them,
they are fighting over the h01f-eaten
bodies of men, and, the vultures sWoop-
ing down, flap their wings and attempt
to seize q part of the prey Beside the
bloody Corpses are mass of ha1f-drie6
5@AtAAA7 ana Af--A anu oEAAAH u INC
day before, and the old woman laughs
through her toOthless gums as she points
you to them. Some of the Buddhists be-
lieve that their chance of Nirvana, or
heaven, is better in case they give their
bodies to the yUltures, and some of these
bodies have been dedicated in this way.
Others are, as 1 have said, those of very
poor people, who can not afford the cost
Of cremation.
There is at Bombay colony of about
20, 600 Parsees, and the men, women, and
children give their bodies to the Yultures.
They are fire Worshipers, and they say
that fire is too sacred to be deHled with 8
dead body, and they believe the work Of
the worms is too slow and too vile. /
visited the Towers Of Silence at Bombay,
on the top of which all dead PGrsess are
laid, and where their bodies are left for
the vultures. These towers are great,
white buildings of block granite, twenty
five feet high and 2, 300 feet in diameter.
Each is built around q central we'll, and
the bodies are laid on the top walls,
which incline inward, so that the rain
Will wash the bones aud juices down into
the we'll. Each we'll has drains running
of into the sea, and each is half filed
with charcoal. On the top of each Of
these towers there is a sort of grating net
work, with mesbes of different sizes,
whether they are intended to hold men,
women, or children. Surrounding the
towers is a beautiful garden of sixty acres
OF trees and flowers, and when [ visited
this everything was in blossom, and the
/ surroundings were as beautiful as the
garden of Eden. AS I looked at the
! towers it seemed that each had a coping
! or frieze of gray about II, and this frieze
! represented great birds. AS got nearer
I noticed that the birds were alive, and
they craned their necks at us, evidently
taking us for cOrpse-bearers. While 1
was in the garden a Parsee funeral came,
and these birds rose in the air and
swoOped down upon the over upon
which the naked Parsee baby was laid
There were 600 of them, and they live
entirely of the flesh of dead Parsees.
They viii strip n skeleton of every shred
of flesh in two hours, and the bones are
left under the sun to dry. A day or two
later they are pushed down into the well,
where they decompOse under the purify
ing influence of the charcoal. The Par
sees always walk to their funerals. They
are the richest and brightest merchants
of the East, but there is no difference
shown as to their condition at funerals.
The coFpses of the rich as we'll as the
poor lie naked on those towers of silence,