thing, heavy feeders, and use the juice of the had taken place on any such pretense, the Chrisgrape in no stinted measure.

tian could certainly be prosecuted for bigamy, although a heathen might have as many wives as he pleased. After this "heavy blow and great discouragement" nothing was ever heard of the Parsee convert.

Without entering on the vexed question of the evangelization of the peoples of India, it may be said that it is very difficult to convince either Parsees or Hindus that the religion of the debauched and roistering British sailors and soldiers is very superior to the religion that controls the lives of such men as the late Cur

Parsee children are frequently very handsome-seldom, however, retaining their good looks beyond the years of maturity. The women have for the most part good features, spoiled, in a great many instances, by an extremely sensual mouth and chin. They are all, however, credited with strict virtue of life; at any rate no lapse ever reaches the ear of the outside world; and it is a fact that a Parsee prostitute is as unheard of as a Parsee beggar. The Parsee is distinguished among Orientals by a peculiarly shaped head-dress of dark spot-setjee Cowasjee, of Calcutta, and Sir Jamsetjee ted muslin the priests alone wearing a white covering to the head. The Parsee is the only known religion in which fasting and celibacy are not considered as meritorious; on the contrary, Zoroaster expressly forbade them. Priests can not officiate unless they are married. They take an easy, philosophical view of life and death, believing in the resurrection, a final judgment, and a future state of rewards and punishments; but they evidently do not hold that the resurrection is to be made in the actual body which the soul has worn in this life, but in an etherealized form of it, or, as St. Paul says, a "spiritual" body. Their reverence follows the soul and not the flesh; and hence the corpse is disregarded by the survivors, having been abandoned by its own life or spiritual tenant. The dead bodies of the Parsees are not consumed by fire, according to the custom of the Hindus, nor interred according to the practice of the Mohammedans, Christians, and Chinese. They hold burial, cremation, or the confiding of the ashes or corpse to the waters, to be a sacrilege against the elements; and they have cemeteries situated at a distance from any inhabited spot, such as the one on Malabar Hilling to his national custom, be called Jejeebhoy, at Bombay, whither the corpses are conveyed and exposed on iron gratings, where they are soon devoured by vultures, kites, and other carnivorous birds, that are forever hovering over these "Halls of Silence."

Jejeebhoy, of Bombay. Few men have ever died leaving behind them a brighter record of humane and charitable deeds than the lastnamed venerable Parsee, who, for his virtues, public spirit, and patriotism, had the unquestioned honor of being the first heathen raised to the dignity of an English baronet. Sir Jamsetjee was the head of a mercantile firm largely interested in the China trade, by which he accumulated an immense fortune, and which he spent in works of benevolence and public utility. Among many other works he built and endowed two large hospitals, and constructed at his own sole expense a magnificent causeway, uniting the island of Bombay with that of Salsette. At the time of the Crimean War he contributed so largely to the fund for the relief of the suffering British soldiery that Queen Victoria conferred on him the title and rank of a knight, and subsequently the higher dignity of a baronet, which rank descends to his heirs male. There was in this case a curious difficulty, arising from the Parsee nomenclature. Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy's eldest son, who would inherit the title, would not, accord

as the first name, or, as we style it, the given name, of a father is that retained by the son. Thus, the Baronet's eldest son was called Cursetjee Jamsetjee, and his son again might have any other prefix to Cursetjee; so that the patronymic would be entirely lost in the third generation. This would have made endless confusion in the Herald's Office of England, so a clause in the patent of creation conferred the name of Jejeebhoy, as well as the title of baronet, on the descendants of the first knight.

We have no statistics to refer to for the number of converts to Christianity from the ranks of Parsees, but from what we personally know we are constrained to believe that they are very few. Some years ago there was a good deal of excitement in Bombay over the conversion of a somewhat prominent member of the Parsee It has been said that the fugitive Persians community. The excitement was not unmix- first landed in Surat, a sea-port on the Gulf of ed with indignation, when it came to be whis- Cutch, where many of their descendants still pered about that the anticipated price of the reside, and where in their principal temple the conversion was a handsome white wife. The fire originally brought flaming from Persia has missionaries strenuously denied any such bar- never been extinguished. For more than one gain; but there were some very suspicious cir- thousand years the same dim, mysterious light cumstances in the case which certainly justified has flickered up toward the heavens, certainly the strong belief in its truth on the part of the no unfit emblem of immortality and eternity. non-religious community. The man had al- But as Bombay has long outstripped Surat in ready a Parsee wife, whom he put away on ac- commercial importance, the principal Parsee count of her idolatry, as he alleged, and who families have fixed their residence in Bombay, sued him in the Supreme Court for alimony.although they all profess to regard Surat as In deciding the case, the presiding judge took more peculiarly their home. It is, perhaps, on occasion to intimate that, if a second marriage this account that, wealthy and liberal as many

of the Parsees are, no place of worship has ever been built by them in Bombay at all commensurate with the means at their disposal and the ostentatious display of their wealth in other respects.

wild shrubs crown the brow of the scarped face of the prophyry-like rock; beneath extends the façade of the temple 130 feet long, with its massive pillars and pilasters, leaving three wide Indeed Bombay is not re-openings or vistas, through which the eye seeks markable for the religious edifice of any creed. to penetrate the gloomy grandeur of the inThere are one or two pagodas on the island terior. The temple fronts the north, so that possessing considerable architectural beauty, the sun gives but little help; and though there the principal of which is represented in our en- are two side-fronts identical in form with the graving; but travelers in search of the beautiful main one (but approached by different paths), and the marvelous, although they have to quit still the light within is considerably more dim the island of Bombay proper, have not far to go than religious. Lighting a torch, the visitor to obtain a surfeit of both. The celebrated caves passes in and onward beneath the flat, farof Elephanta, and the grottoes of Kanheri, not spreading roof, and between the rows of pillars, so famous perhaps, but equally interesting, are whose cushion-like capitals seem pressed down both within a two hours' journey from Bombay by the weight of the mountain; until, passing Green. Bombay itself is an island situated gigantic figures sculptured in high relief on the on the western coast of Hindostan, in the six-side-walls, he at length reaches the back of the teenth parallel of latitude. It is connected southward with the smaller island of Coolaba by a fine stone causeway, and to the larger island of Salsette on the north by a similar structure. Elephanta is also an island in the spacious and safe harbor which bears the name of the principal city. It is distant seven miles from the fort, and is easily approached by the native boats which ply for hire at the bunders, or wharves. A pleasant row of an hour or so will bring the visitor to the beautiful island. Ascending the path leading upward through the narrow valley that separates the two long hills which constitute the island, and keeping to the left along the bend of the hill, suddenly he will find himself in an open space, and before him the entrance to a rock-hewn temple, whose huge columns seem to support the whole mountain that rises above. Brush-wood and

cave, and beholds in a recess a colossal figure, three heads on one bust, representing the god Siva. In other sculptures on the walls appear another four-faced god-said by the Hindu guide, but erroneously, to be Brahma, riding on a swan-the elephant-headed Ganesa, and a company of nymphs or celestial choristers. But the presiding deity is Siva, the god alike of destruction and reproduction, and incidents of his life are sculptured around. In one group he appears in a hermaphrodite form, with one breast, and holding a trident; in another he appears as the destroyer, and wearing a necklace of human skulls, with the venomous serpent the cobra, or hooded snake, before him, and brandishing a sword in one of his four hands, while the victim of his wrath lies crushed before him. The φαλλοι appear in one of the side apartments, and serve as still

the religions of India-Buddhist, Jain, or Brah- | century before Christ, few of these cave strucminical-but four-fifths of them are not temples, but viharas, or monasteries, for the once numerous priesthood of Buddha. As Gotama, the founder of Buddhism, lived in the sixth | Christian era.

tures can lay claim to any great antiquity. Those at Kanheri, given in our engravings, are generally credited to the second century of the

fresh as the day they were limned, representing the manners and customs of India fifteen or sixteen hundred years ago. Not at Kanheri, but in some of the older rock halls, not only the walls and roofs, but even the pillars, are wholly covered with stucco, and ornamented with painting. On the walls are extensive compositions of figures and landscapes; on pillars, single detached figures, representing either Buddha or Buddhist saints; while the paintings on the roof are almost invariably architectural frets and scrolls, often of extreme beauty and elegance, rivaling many of those at Pompeii and the Baths of Titus.

The grottoes of Kanheri are not so easy of access as the caves of Elephanta. The visitor leaves Bombay by railroad; and, if he has had good advice, he will have made arrangements for ponies, or a palkie-gharrie, to meet him at Bhandoop, a station seven miles from the caves. Even then the journey is by no means a very pleasant one, for the path lies through a dense jungle. After passing through this, precipitous rocks are seen covering the hill-sides; and in these precipices are excavations, for the most part rising in stories above one another, connected by flights of steps cut in the face of the rock. These viharas consist of a central hall, supported by from four to twenty, or even more, No eye regards these pleasant frescos now. pillars, with small cells all around it for the This frailest of the arts has here seen a whole priests, and a sanctuary containing an image of religion pass away before it, like a scroll, from Buddha. Here occurs the curious spectacle of the land of its birth. Priests and worshipers a rock-hewn temple in the exact form of a have alike departed. Buddha himself is a forChristian church, but with two colossal statues gotten name in India, although once he was of Buddha on either side of the portico. And adored from the Himalayas to Ceylon. These it is pleasing to note that Art went with the rock temples have long survived the worship Buddhist monk into his rock halls, in some of which inspired their constructors, and promise which the fresco paintings on the walls remain to outlast even Hinduism itself.