th carrion, Parsees
give to Armasti pure dust. Armasti means, literally, "fostering cow,"
and Zoroaster teaches that the cultivation of land is the noblest of all
occupations in the eyes of God. Accordingly, the worship of Earth is
so sacred among the Parsees, that they take all possible precautions
against polluting the "fostering cow" that gives them "a hundred golden
grains for every single grain." In the season of the Monsoon, when,
during four months, the rain pours incessantly down and washes into the
well everything that is left by the vultures, the water absorbed by the
earth is filtered, for the bottom of the well, the walls of which are
built of granite, is, to this end, covered with sand and charcoal.

The sight of the Pinjarapala is less lugubrious and much more amusing.
The Pinjarapala is the Bombay Hospital for decrepit animals, but a
similar institution exists in every town where Jainas dwell. Being one
of the most ancient, this is also one of the most interesting, of the
sects of India. It is much older than Buddhism, which took its rise
about 543 to 477 B.C. Jainas boast that Buddhism is nothing more than a
mere heresy of Jainism, Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, having been a
disciple and follower of one of the Jaina Gurus. The customs, rites,
and philosophical conceptions of Jainas place them midway between the
Brahmanists and the Buddhists. In view of their social arrangements,
they more closely resemble the former, but in their religion they
incline towards the latter. Their caste divisions, their total
abstinence from flesh, and their non-worship of the relics of the
saints, are as strictly observed as the similar tenets of the Brahmans,
but, like Buddhists, they deny the Hindu gods and the authority of
the Vedas, and adore their own twenty-four Tirthankaras, or Jinas, who
belong to the Host of the Blissful. Their priests, like the Buddhists',
never marry, they live in isolated viharas and choose their successors
from amongst the members of any social class. According to them, Prakrit
is the only sacred language, and is used in their sacred literature,
as well as in Ceylon. Jainas and Buddhists have the same traditional
chronology. They do not eat after sunset, and carefully dust any place
before sitting down upon it, that they may not crush even the tiniest of
insects. Both systems, or rather both schools of philosophy, teach the
theory of eternal indestructible atoms, following the ancient atomis