“If a man dies in the afternoon, his body is not carried to the towers till next day, and in that case the fire is kept alive the whole night near the body, two priests alternately reciting manthrâs. Some time is thus allowed to intervene between the supposed death and the disposal of the body in the Towers of Silence. There, too, the body is not laid without Zoroastrian ceremony. But in the system of disposal itself we see another protection, in that the carrion-birds do not touch the body unless they instinctively find evidence of putrefaction. It is a fact that in not a few cases persons have escaped from the dismal and terrible fate of being laid alive in the Towers of Silence. The system of disposal in the tower may appear to non-Zoroastrians repulsive; but neither the system of cremation nor burial will give us back those whom they have once devoured. That the Parsees do not allow those who have returned from the Towers of Silence to intermingle among them is another question. This too, however, has attracted the attention of this small community; and I hear that there is a standing order issued from the trustees of the Parsee Panchayet at Bombay to the Nasasâlârs (the corpse-bearers) to the effect that they would be rewarded if they would give information or bring back any body which had been revived after it had been carried to the Towers of Silence.”
The Parsee custom of using the dog is suggestive. There are numerous cases on record where a dog, following his master to the grave as one of the mourners, has refused to leave the grave; and these have been quoted as a proof of the undying love of the master’s canine friend. May it not be that dogs are gifted, as believed by the Parsees, with another sense denied to most men--the faculty of discerning between real and apparent death? A medical correspondent relates the following:--
“In Austria, in 1870, a man seemed to be dead, and was placed in a coffin. After the usual three days of watching over the supposed corpse, the funeral was commenced; and when the coffin was being carried out of the house, it was noticed that the dog which belonged to the supposed defunct became very cross, and manifested great eagerness toward the coffin, and could not be driven away. Finally, as the coffin was about to be placed in the hearse, the dog attacked the bearers so furiously that they dropped it on the ground; and in the shock the lid was broken off, and the man inside awoke from his lethargic condition, and soon recovered his full consciousness. He was alive and well at last news of him. Dogs might possibly be of use in deciding doubtful cases, where their master was concerned.”