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You can see specimens of every race and nation in the native city, nearly always in their own distinctive costumes, and they are the source of never-ending interest Arabs, Persians, Afghans, Rajputs, Parsees, Chinese, Japanese, Malays, Lascars, Negroes from Zanzibar, Madagascar and the Congo, Abyssinians.
There were athletic Afghans, and many other strange tribes. There were conjurers and snake-charmers, vendors of pipes and mangoes, and Hindu women in colours that pale those of Egypt and Syria. There were two sorts of Parsees, one white-turbaned, and the other whose headgear was black, spotted with red.
The missionary, the engineer, the doctor, the lawyer, and the political reformer have all helped to remove the bars of caste and race by converting Brahmans, Mohammedans, Parsees to a common Christianity or by undermining their attachment to their particular distinctions.
The priests, or rather bearers, are considered so impure that they are excluded from all other society, and form a separate caste. Whoever has the misfortune to brush against one of these men, must instantly throw off his clothes and bathe. The Parsees are not less exclusive with respect to their temples; no one of any other belief is allowed to enter them, or even to look in.
There, on bright moonlit nights, with the sea and the city below me, the "Tower of Silence" in the Parsees' burial plot ablaze with reflected glory, the majestic banyan over me rustling gently in the soft sea breeze, while Lona nestled close beside me, the exquisite perfume of the luxuriant garden less welcome than the delicious fragrance of her breath, hours fraught with years of bliss would pass as if but pulse-beats.
At last a Persian merchant heard of their distress; and he came to see them every day, bringing them warm milk and wholesome food: when they were well enough to be moved, he took them to his own house, and nursed them with the greatest care. Who was this kind merchant? Not a Mahomedan, but of the religion of the fire worshippers, or Parsees.
The variety of nationality present was infinite; the participants in varied dress were Parsees, Hindoos, Mussulmans, English, Egyptians, with a sprinkling of French and Italians.
In the same way we are told by Viscount Amberley that the priests of Ceylon first present the gifts to the god, and then eat them. Among the Parsees, when a man dies, the relatives must bring four new robes to the priests; if they do this, the priests wear the robes; if they fail to do it, the dead man appears naked before the judgment-throne.
"Ye hae thoucht mair aboot it nor me, laddie! But what ye say wadna haud wi' the Parsees, 'at lay oot their deid to be devoored by the birds o' the air." "They swipe up their banes at the last. An', though the livin' expose the deid, the deid mayna like it." "I daursay. Ony gait it maun be a fine thing to lea' as little dirt as possible ahin' ye, an' tak nane wi' ye.
It is the brotherhood of religions." Chairman John Henry Barrows, in his address, said: "We are here not as Baptists and Buddhists, Catholics and Confucians, Parsees and Presbyterians, Methodists and Moslems; we are here as members of a Parliament of Religions, over which flies no sectarian flag, ... but where for the first time in large council is lifted up the banner of love, fellowship, brotherhood.... Welcome, one and all, thrice welcome to the world's first Parliament of Religions!
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