India is the only country in the world where the civilization of the East and that of the West are found side by side with equal rights and equal chances of a free and full development. For, although the English have conquered, and at present rule the country, they have respected the peculiar customs and manners of the Hindoos, and guaranteed them liberty to practice the same and to develop their social and religious institutions in so far as they do not conflict with the generally acknowledged principles of humanity.

Accordingly in Calcutta and other cities in India we frequently find a stately Christian church side by side with a Hindoo temple with its officiating priests. On one side of the street we may see a fine European residence filled with guests around the dinner-table, eating, chatting, and toasting just as at home, and on the other a Hindoo villa, where turbaned Brahmins, in a squatting posture, eat their rice or smoke their hokah, while extolling the merits of their juggernaut. At popular meetings and fÊtes European lords, bishops, officials, and ladies are often seen engaged in a friendly conversation with Hindoo princes, or learned pundits, Mohammedan warriors, Persian, Armenian or Jewish merchants. On the streets and promenades the European carriage and the Hindoo palanquin are seen side by side; in Calcutta there are scores of high schools and academies on the European plan, and close to these again others where young students in oriental costumes and turbaned heads, squat before a half-naked Brahmin, seeking wisdom and knowledge from the works of the Vedas or Shastras.

It is therefore not surprising that in the very harbor where American and European flags are waving from hundreds of mast-heads lies Nimtoolaghat, a Hindoo place of cremation, from which the whole day long dense clouds of smoke arise, scattering the vapors of burning human bodies. It is a large brick building which is divided into two apartments by a brick wall. The apartment which is next to the street is covered by a roof, but the one next to the harbor is open at the top. The floor is made of clay, excepting the spots under the funeral pyres, where it consists of large flagstones. I have often stood at this place, and it always seemed to me that our cemeteries with their monuments, grass plots, trees, and flowers are dear places which, to some extent, reconcile man to stern death, while here everything seemed dead and hopeless. I will describe for the reader what I saw at one of my visits to this place of desolation. On the flagstones in the roofless apartment were six separate pyres, two of which were already reduced to ashes when I entered, two others were about half consumed by the fire, only a few bones being visible among the fire-brands; but on each of the other two was a naked corpse, the outside of which was scorched by the flames, while blood and water were slowly oozing out of mouth and nostrils, while the burning flesh hissed and sputtered where the heat was most intense, so that the whole presented a shocking sight. A score of half-naked Brahmins were busy around the pyres muttering prayers and making signs over the dead, while the nearest relatives walked around the corpses uttering cries of lamentation. Particularly violent was the grief of a young woman whose mother had just been laid upon the pyre, deep sorrow and heart-rending lamentations testifying to the love she had borne the deceased.

Now the fine-split wood is piled up into a new pyre about six feet long, two feet wide, and two and one-half feet high, and four men bring the corpse of a man on a bier. It is covered with a white sheet, which is taken away, so as to leave only a small piece of cloth covering the corpse. This is the body of a Fakir, a stately man with fine features, and past the prime of life. As soon as the body is placed on the pyre, two Brahmins pile fine-split wood around and over it so that only the face is visible. Then comes the eldest son of the deceased and rubbing the face with fresh butter lays several lumps of it on the pyre. He then walks three times around the corpse and lights with a fire-brand a whisk of straw in his father’s pyre. The fire spreads rapidly through the dry wood. The melting butter flows through it, the flames roar and crackle, and the dead body makes writhing muscular motions under the influence of the fire, the skin bursting open in several places, and a thin fluid trickling out which adds fuel to the flames. The face shrinks and vanishes under our eyes, an unpleasant smell of burnt flesh permeates the air, and in a little while all is over, and the Brahmins gather the ashes and scatter them on the waters of the sacred Ganges.

Who can wonder that a stranger, witnessing such a ceremony, experiences in his own breast questions and surmises such as these: Is this, then, all? Where is the Fakir who mortified his body by all kinds of torture, who struggled and suffered in order to become acceptable to the gods? Was there nothing more than that shell, consumed before our eyes? Is the man who spent half of his life-time gazing into the boundless realm of space and yearning and longing for the unknown, the infinite, no longer in existence? Was his longing only a mockery, or was it a foreshadowing of that which is to come? What would life be if all terminated in the pyre or in the grave? To what purpose, then, all noble endeavors, whose aim and object only relate to the uncertain future? The deepest premonitions of the human soul, and the most beautiful hopes of the heart, how far are these from the thought that all our feelings, our loftiest ambitions,—in one word the best part of our being,—can be annihilated in a crematory! The Fakir whose body was now reduced to ashes had lived in the faith of his immortality, had worshiped the deities of his people, because he knew no better, but was he on that account less welcome in the everlasting mansions?

Formerly the wife was burned alive on the pyre of her husband, but this practice has been abolished by the English government, although it is still said to be adhered to secretly in the interior of the country. That woman is considered very fortunate who can enjoy the privilege of “sati,” that is, be burned alive on the funeral pyre of her husband, for thereby she secures unquestionable happiness in the next world. So strongly can religious enthusiasm, even in our days, influence a sensible and civilized people. We generally suppose cremation in India to be an imposing ceremony, such as a great pyre, intense heat, which keeps a devout congregation at a proper distance, etc. Such is not the case, however; for, leaving out the mourning relatives, it may better be compared with the hilarious soldiers around the camp-fire roasting the booty of a nightly raid,—a shote or a quarter of beef.

An entirely different mode of burial is used among the Parsees, who are descendants of the ancient Persians, and live in the western part of India where they were driven from Iran by the Mohammedans. They profess the religion of Zoroaster and are fire-worshipers. They regard the earth, air, water and fire as sacred objects, but a corpse, on the contrary, as something unclean, and therefore they would not pollute the fire by burning the dead, nor soil the earth or the sea by burying them. In place of this they expose the dead bodies in the open air to be devoured by birds of prey. For this purpose are erected towers of stone, on the top of which are iron grates to put the bodies on. In one of the suburbs of Bombay are three such towers on Malabar hill. They are called “The Towers of Silence.” Each of them has only one entrance, and they are about twenty feet high. Large flocks of ravens and vultures surround them sitting on branches of the palm trees in the vicinity. As soon as a corpse is exposed there is a fierce rush for it, and within an hour the birds have consumed everything except, of course, the bones, which drop down into a vault under the tower, or are thrown there by means of tongs held by gloved servants, who afterward clean themselves by bathing and change of clothing.