Chapter 6

BOMBAY AND ITS PARSEE "JEES" AND "BHOYS"

The Parsee is the only sect holding religious tenets strange enough to stamp them as "peculiar people" who amount to much in the material affairs of life. Every country possesses groups of people having religious beliefs and practices which attract to them a curious interest; but Bombay's Parsee colony is the only illustration of a brotherhood following strange lives who shine resplendently in the financial and social worlds.

Everything in Bombay is dominated by the Parsee element, and every public hospital and other charitable institution, public statue, or drinking fountain, is the benefaction of a Parsee. The mansions and finest villas are Parsee homes, the leaders of club life are Parsees, and almost every bank and influential commercial house bears a Parsee name on its door. Bombay's population is not far from nine hundred thousand, of which the Parsees number only sixty thousand--but this minority impresses its importance on the majority and gives a character of unique interest to the city.

These dominating people are Indians only by adoption. Twelve hundred years ago the Mohammedan conquerors of Persia persecuted the disciples of Zoroaster to an extent that many of the strongest men and women of the faith fled to India for safety, and the Parsees of to-day are the descendants of these refugees. For generations they have made education a feature, have always helped each other, and been extremely clannish, although preserving toward people of other religions a respectful attitude. Their creed, claimed to have descended from the Hebrew prophet Daniel, is expressed in three precepts of two words each: Good thoughts, good words, good deeds. Orthodox Parsees wear a white girdle of three coils as reminder of these principles; but present-day Parsee men have discarded all evidences of their creed save the designating vizorless cap, and dress in garments of European pattern, and their women are garbed in robes of delicately-shaded and clinging silks, and wear embroidered mantillas on their heads.

Most Parsees are superbly educated, variously accomplished, and speak English fluently. Their equipages are the smartest in Bombay, and every walk of life is led by them. The great fortunes of this part of India are theirs, and Parsee names are identified with everything contributing to Bombay's importance. These names are strikingly peculiar, are usually of from four to six syllables, the last being usually "jee" or "bhoy." The Jeejeebhoy family is intensely Parsee, of course, and important enough to possess an English baronetcy. The city's principal hospital was the gift of Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy. Other families of renown in the financial world are the Readymoneys, Jehangirs and Sassoons.

Turn where you may the eye meets something donated to the public by generous Parsees. These people have long been loyal supporters of British rule in India, and frequently able to neutralize Hindu or Mohammedan opposition to a public measure. Baronetcies and knighthoods have consequently been showered upon them from London. Incidentally, a good deal of the money with which hospitals and libraries were given by great Parsees of a former generation came as reward for running a successful "corner" in Indian cotton at the time of America's civil war. Lancashire mills could get no staple from the Southern states, and astute Bombay capitalists, securing control of the native crop, held the same until the price advanced from ten or twelve cents to a dollar a pound. The fruits of this _coup_., some of them at least, dotted Bombay with noble buildings and statues.

Some Parsees drive public street vehicles, work on tramways and railways, and pursue humbler vocations, it is true; but most Parsees dwell in princely homes and go to their offices and clubs in splendidly appointed broughams and victorias. Success in life even in Parseedom is based upon the principle of survival of the fittest--or astutest.

The Parsees stoutly deny that they are fire worshippers. The sacred flame perpetually burning in their houses of worship, brought by their ancestors from Persia, is but a symbol, they insist. God, according to their faith, is the emblem of glory, refulgence, and spiritual life; therefore they face the holy flame when praying as the most fitting symbol of the Deity. In the open air they prostrate themselves when praying to the setting sun. Parsee temples are plain to severity, with walls bare and floors uncovered and empty; but there is always the recess wherein burns the sacred fire of incense and sandalwood.

The method of dealing with the Parsee dead is startlingly original, and said to be in strict keeping with the teaching of Zoroaster. According to Parsee tenets fire is too highly venerated to be polluted by burning the dead, while water is equally respected, and Mother Earth as well. Hence the Parsees offer their dead to the elements and the birds of the air, and the bones of rich and poor, high and low, even of the malefactor and suicide, are consigned to eternity in crumbled state in a common pit.

The Towers of Silence occupy the finest site on Malabar Hill, overlooking beautiful Bombay, and high above the Arabian Sea--it is Nature's beauty spot, embowered in graceful shrubbery and palms, with fragrant flowers everywhere. The governor of Bombay Presidency resides at Malabar Point, further along, and the homes of men high in officialdom or commerce occupy every available site in the neighborhood. The Towers, five in number, are of whitewashed stone and cement, 275 feet in circumference, and perhaps twenty-five feet high. An iron door admits the corpse of the Parsee, and once within the strange building it is proffered to the birds of the air--gloating vultures, coarse and repugnant in every aspect.

Four carriers of the dead are seen approaching the beautiful garden with a bier on their shoulders. Two bearded men, the only living persons permitted to enter a Tower, come next. Then follow from fifty to a hundred mourners and friends in pure white robes, walking two and two, each couple holding a handkerchief between them in token of a united grief. The apex of the hill reached, the mourners turn into the house of prayer, wherein the eternal fire is burning, or take position beneath spreading palms for solitary meditation. The bearers deliver the corpse to the bearded functionaries at the entrance to the Tower, and these carry it within. The floor of the Tower is of iron grating with three circles whereon the corpses are placed. The inner circle is for children, the next for women, and the outer for men.

The bearded men are lost to view for a minute or two only, and their concluding office within is to remove the shroud, leaving the body wholly bare. The iron door clangs as they emerge, there is a mighty whir of wings, and in a twinkling the corpse is in possession of hundreds of greedy, competing vultures. In twenty minutes not a vestige of flesh remains on the bones, and the loathsome birds resume their watch from the edge of the Tower for the next comer. Their experienced gaze perceives a funeral procession a mile away in the direction of the city, and a signal cry is so readily understood by vultures resting on trees in the neighborhood that a unanimous attendance is assured long before the corpse passes the portal of the grounds.

The human skeletons are left within the Tower to disintegrate by action of sun and wind, heat and cold. In time the bearded men, gloved and with tongs, remove them to a vast well in the middle of the enclosure, where with lapse of time they turn to dust.

Corpses being considered unclean by Parsee standards, carriers of the dead, as well as those who enter the Towers, are assigned to a class by themselves, and forbidden to mix with others of their strange religion. There is a superstition that an awful curse would be visited upon an unauthorized person whose gaze fell upon a body or skeleton inside a Tower of Silence. The habiliments of those whose duty takes them within are always destroyed before they leave the grounds.

Whatever may be claimed in defense of the Parsee method of dealing with their dead, from a sanitary standpoint, the custom possesses an aspect gruesome in the extreme. The Hindus' system of burning on the river bank is even less repulsive.

If any city in the East is sport-mad it is Bombay. Men work there mornings and engage in something of a sportive character afternoons. The school-boy, even, slings his books from a hockey stick, and the departmental clerk sets out for an afternoon's sociability accompanied by his faithful tennis racquet. Nowhere can better polo be seen than on the Marine Lines Maidan; as for cricket, there probably are more players in Bombay, British and native, than in any town of its population in England--and Bombay's cricket is of the best. More than once have crack teams out from England been heartlessly beaten by local Parsee players. Golf is considered too slow. The next best thing to being a member of the nobility is for a Briton to belong to the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, for it gives him the _cachet_ to everything Asiatic. The club-house on the Apollo Bunder possesses the best situation on the water front, and from its verandas fashionables watch matches that are sailed with consummate skill. During winter months foot-ball appeals strongly to the soldier class, while motor-car races and trials appear to be daily events.

It is the horse that is king, however, in Bombay's pastimes. The Hunt Club sends the smart set to the suburbs now and then, and tent-pegging and pig-sticking draw biggish audiences from the military class whenever contests are announced. But the paramount sport of the masses is horse-racing, pure and simple. The course is on the plains a few miles out of town, close to a suburb given over to cotton-mills, where nearly as many spindles fly as at Fall River. All Bombay seems to be at the races, irrespective of religious or social distinctions--everyone present loves the horse and appears possessed of a goodly supply of rupees with which to back his selections.

The Jockey Club has its own lawn and private enclosure on the stand, and there is a box for the governor and anybody coming from Government House. The grand-stand bears a minor importance to the betting ring, for the latter holds a surging, throbbing medley of humanity--society folk from India's innermost official set, sleek Parsees wearing gold rimmed eye-glasses, rajahs from all parts, wealthy merchants and bankers, fez-wearing Mohammedans from the world of Islam, men from the Persian Gulf in astrachan head-gear, Pathans from beyond the Himalayas, Sikhs from the Punjab--as can be gathered in great India, the museum of the human race.

Three score book-makers howl their bargains in raucous tones, and a whirlwind of rupee paper passes to the strong boxes. The crowd is backing the favorites. Even the Arab horse dealers from the Bhendi bazaar, manly fellows in the garb of desert sheikhs, whose pockets bulge with rolls of notes, comprehend the book-makers' jargon of English that might be incomprehensible to an Oxford don. A prince who is heir to the rulership of one of the greatest states in India has no scruples against inviting an expression of opinion as to so-and-so's bay filly of a native sportsman with beard dyed red with henna, in keeping with the fashion of his kind. Escorted ladies of position, and unescorted women in pairs from Grant Road, are present before the betting booths. Fair Parsee ladies, wearing clinging robes of delicate shades, wait patiently while their swains place their money on the impending event.

A bell rings loudly--the horses are at the post. The mob rushes from the betting ring to the lawn; only few take the trouble to climb to their seats. It is a quick race. The crowd of standees in the inner field see it best, and down this mighty nondescript body is echoed the cry "Kedge Anchor!" Sure enough, "Kedge Anchor," an unknown from Australia, ridden by a jockey of obscure past, wins the great race. Three favorites are ingloriously beaten. Up go the numbers. All is over in less than two minutes--and the crowd goes pell-mell back to the book-makers' enclosure, hoping for better luck over the next race on the card. If rupees were dollars, the financial aspect of a Bombay racing day would be important.

Kipling wrote true when he called Bombay "India's Queen City." It lacks the depressing influences of Calcutta, as well as the odors. Indeed, it is one of the handsomest cities of the whole British Empire, and has more notable buildings than Manchester or Edinburgh. True, its stately piles blend the Gothic and Indian schools of architecture, but otherwise there is nothing Eastern about Bombay--save its people. A man awakening from long slumber on a ship anchored off the Apollo Bunder would willingly swear he beheld a European town. Eight tenths of India's visitors arrive and depart from Bombay.

The opening of the Suez Canal made certain the importance of Bombay as a trade center. It is now the largest cotton port in the world next to New Orleans, and if plague and smallpox might be controlled for five years it would have a population of a million. Bombay is a comparatively modern city, as cities count in immemorial India. England secured Bombay in 1661, not by conquest, but as a portion of the marriage dowry of Catharine of Braganza of Portugal, when she became the queen of Charles II.

The world's most artistic railway station--not the largest, nor costliest--is in Bombay, and the best marble statue in existence of Queen Victoria was presented to the Bombay municipality by His Highness the Gaekwar of Baroda. Another notable gift is the bronze statue of Edward VII, donated by Sir Albert Sassoon, son of a public-spirited banker from Baghdad, who took up his residence in Bombay. A newcomer among the city's office buildings is "Roosevelt House," advantageously situated near the Apollo Bunder.

The eyes of the person recently arrived from Europe or America behold many strange and amusing sights in the streets of Bombay, and for days your local guide and the obliging porter at the hotel is kept busy the livelong day answering questions. The native policeman is a human institution who explains himself. It is averred that he is loyal and efficient, but with his calfless legs bared to the knee and feet shod in sandals, he looks a queer cousin of Fifth Avenue's "Finest" and of the "Bobby" of London. A person unaccustomed to the habits of subject races gets the idea that the Bombay constable's first duty is the touching of his cap to white men, all and sundry; but it is said to his credit that in a street brawl or a water front quarrel among drunken lascars he fights like a wildcat. He is extremely proud of his truncheon, for it is a badge of office tremendously respected in the city's labyrinths where India's heterogeneous peoples dwell a dozen or more in a room. During the wet monsoon the policeman of Bombay carries an umbrella supplied by the municipality, which heightens his comical aspect--but it keeps him dry.

The markings and badges of caste observed in Bombay streets lead you to a constant interrogation of your sources of information. At the outset you determine to obtain an understanding of the institution of Indian caste, but a fortnight after your arrival in Bombay you conclude that the task is too great for anybody having other things to do, and give it up in despair. A few facts connected with this supreme and dominating characteristic take root in your memory, however, and you have learned that the customs and rites of caste could not be strengthened even by legal enactments, or by the massed strength of all the armies on earth. The word is derived from the Latin word _castus_, implying purity of blood, and whose essential principle is marriage. India's population groups forty-seven nationalities, divided into 2,378 recognized castes and tribes. Accident of birth determines irrevocably a native's social and domestic relationship, prescribing even what he may eat and drink throughout life, how he must dress, and whom he may marry. There are four fundamental divisions of caste--the priestly or Brahmin (which has close upon fifteen million devotees), the warrior, the trading, and the laboring; and these have interminable subdivisions. Below the laboring caste there is a substratum which is termed pariah or outcast, and these degraded specimens of humanity are not better than animated machines performing the functions of public scavengers.

Throughout India caste is hereditary. The son of a priest becomes a priest, a warrior's son becomes a soldier, and a carpenter's boy a carpenter, and so on. For a father to start a son in any calling but his own, or a vocation that is similar, would be "against his caste." Caste is social as well as religious, and includes the occupation as well as the creed. For a Hindu to rise from his inherited caste is next to impossible, and this tends to make the Hindus an ambitionless race. The infusion of new blood is likewise not tolerated, and in India "caste" and "custom" are perfect synonyms--and each a national curse.

A major part of the people of India are agriculturists, men and women who are dependent upon what they can wrest from the soil for their existence. Their plough, an heirloom from remote antiquity, merely scratches the earth. The use of superior implements would result in superior tillage and augmented crops; but it would be as simple to induce the peasant to change his religion as to get him to forsake the plough used by his ancestors. The implements of daily life mostly belong to the barbarous ages. Attempt to introduce any other and you are rebuked by the reply: "It is not the custom; my father used this article, and therefore it is my duty to use it. Would you have me set myself up for a wiser person than my revered parent?" The toiling masses, consequently, are poor--and seem destined to remain poor until the close of the chapter.

I heard of a contractor engaged in building a railway who objected to the physical toil and slowness of having a bank of earth removed by baskets on the heads of coolies. So he invested in a number of wheelbarrows and explained their use to the natives, and went back to his Bombay office flattering himself that he was a reformer. The next week when he visited the scene of operations he found the barrows in use, but the coolies were filling them with dirt and carrying them up the bank on their heads as they had always carried their baskets. The coolie of Hind is not to be beguiled by any demonstration intended to lighten his task, for he is crusted with conservatism and prejudice.

In Bombay I engaged a man-servant to accompany me on a trip to the Punjab. It being a winter of unusual severity, and the journey involving much night travel, the agent from whom I hired the servant advised me that it would be a beneficial as well as a humane act were I to give the man ten rupees with which to procure an "outfit" suitable for one going to the north. "It's sometimes done, but not often enough to make it a custom," explained the agent; "but it would be the right thing--and because voluntary, the poor fellow should serve you all the better for your generosity. Give him but ten rupees, and see that he spends it all for heavy undergarments and serviceable shoes."

Experiencing some haziness as to how any tittle of reputation for generosity was going to be reared on an expenditure aggregating just $3.20 in American money, I communicated my determination to the man who perforce was to be my constant companion for a month, and who had it in his power to make me love or hate the country. As was to be expected, I was many kinds of a sahib for my munificent benefaction, and Torab Jan salaamed almost to the floor when promising to return from the bazaars in good time to strap my mattress and pack my trunk in readiness to go to the station directly dinner was over.

Hours later, but in time to throw my clothes and books into trunk and bags, Torab stalked into the apartment, and close upon his heels was another native carrying a not overlarge parcel. Torab was frank in stating that he had purchased precisely what he needed, and proffered a snip of paper covered with characters in Hindustani to prove he had expended precisely ten rupees, which made it necessary to have another benefaction--two annas this time.

"What are the two annas for, and who is this man?" I asked.

"He's the coolie bearing my parcel from the bazaar, master," was the response; "you must know that my caste makes it impossible for me to carry parcels."

"See here, you drooling idiot; what do you think I have hired you for? Why, you've got to carry parcels, lots of them, and big ones at that; and you'll have to carry that bed there and my trunk half over India, likely as not. Don't talk to me about caste."

"Pray, master, don't be angry with me. I know I'm to carry _your_ things--that's what I'm for. I forgot to explain that my caste forbids only the carrying of my own parcels," the poor fellow whined.

And so it was. In places where there were no carriages Torab seemed to delight in loading himself dawn with my paraphernalia, but his belongings had always to be carried religiously by a native of a breed earning its living by acting as human drays.