India's New Year Days; Celebrated Frequently

1915

INDIA'S NEW YEAR DAYS

They celebrate the occasion frequently by knocking off work and holding funerals. Some bury their dead, some burn them and some feed the corpses to buzzards.

India beats the world for the number and variety of its New Year days and this is so because of the large number of races and religions.

When a traveler who expects to spend some time in the country goes to the bank with his letter of credit, usually a card is handed him on which is printed the various holidays. This is for his convenience, so that he will not let himself get out of funds and go to the bank in a hurry, only to find it closed on account of some holiday. The holiday may be Christian, Mohammedan or that of any one of the numerous Hindu sects.

"When the usual card was given me in Bombay," says a writer, "I noted the number of these holidays which were ascribed to New Year. They did not exactly bear out the humorous description of every day in the year as a New Year day, but there seemed hardly a month of the Christian calendar which did not have at least one New Year designated, and in some months there were more."

Kaleidoscopic Bombay observes all these New Year days because the stream of Asiatic life which circulates through it includes all the civilization and all the races and legions of the Orient, with some additions from the Occident. The spirit is one of catholicity.

All the races and all the religious sects observe the New Year of the Christian calendar, because British rule of India is reflected in this day; but they also observe the New Year of the different races and religions among themselves, at least to the extent of knocking off work.

Whether in Bombay or Benares, the monkey temple has its throng of Hindu worshipers, and the Mohammedans often are not unwilling to share in the observance to the extent of foregoing their business activities. The Hindus on their part are apt to think it a shame to work on a Mohammedan New Year day when the Moslem population may be thronging the Jumma Musquid mosque. So it goes all round the circle of New Year holidays.

There is a simple arithmetical method of calculating the time from the Hegira in the terms of the Christian era, but the easier way is to accept Without question the fact that such and such a day is the New Year of the Mohammedan era. Similarly, the New Year of the Buddhists and the Brahmins and the Jains and the Sikhs may be accepted without bothering about the calendar.

The British New Year in Bombay or Calcutta, or Delhi is much the same as in England

While the Christian New Year is formal and stately on account of British authority, it has less standing than the New Year of the Parsees, because it is a single day's observance, while the Parsees take two days. The year I happened to be in Bombay was the Parsee Yazdezardi, 1276, and the New Year days came on September 13 and 14.

On this day I was afforded the opportunity of witnessing the Parsee religious observances, or Zoroastrian services. It was in the Allbless Bagh, on the Charni road. Their churches or temples of worship are free from architectural pretensions without and within. They are more like an ordinary hall.

In this temple the women were gathered at one end of the room and the men at the other and in the space between was a stand holding a lamp with the eternal fire under glass. The flame was very clear. A venerable bearded priest stood beside the lamp. His discourse was earnest and solemn. Both man and woman hearers were very attentive.

The ceremonies of worship are quite simple, but the mysteries of the faith may be less so. The Parsees who have been educated in England and many of those whose English education has been obtained in Bombay resent the designation of fire worshipers.

One of them gave me a monograph, written by a Parsee barrister in London, which explained the creed of the followers of Zoroaster as one of good thoughts, good words and good deeds, with the sacred flame as a symbol of the effulgence of the deity. It is not denied, however, that contact with Hindus and Mohammedans has caused corruptions to creep into the creed. The Hindus and Moslems regard the Parsees as fire worshipers.

It was on a New Year day that I drove out to Malabar hill, where are located the Towers of Silence, or the Parsee cemetery. Every traveler takes his drive. It is past the other cemeteries, Christian and Mohammedan burial grounds and the Hindu burning ghat. The cemetery of the Christians is no longer used, but on almost any day there will be Mohammedan funerals and Hindu cremations.

On this day there were two Mohammedan funerals and three parties of Hindu mourners, with their respective burdens at the burning ghat.

Malabar hill is the choice spot overlooking the Arabian sea. Within the cemetery grounds are flagstone steps, shaded walks and arbors and bowers, luxuriant vegetation covers the rocks, and there is everything that goes to make a beautiful garden of flowers.

The towers of Silence, of which there are five, are hardly towers at all. They are about 275 feet in circumference and perhaps 25 feet high. The material is whitewashed stone and cement or mortar. A near approach to the towers is not allowed strangers to the Parsee creed, nor entrance permitted to the fire temple, where the sacred fire is kept alive and seven kinds of incense are burned.

A model of the towers is shown in the registry room and an attendant explains them to visitors. The attendant explained to me the circular rows which the bodies were placed — one for the children, one for the women and one for the men. When the bodies have been stripped of their fleshly covering by the vultures, which takes perhaps half an hour, the bones remain for a while, and are then dropped into a well in the center, which is provided with drains and water flushes. Charcoal is the chief purifier.

On this New Year day there was a Parsee funeral, which could be observed only at a respectful distance. There were the four professional body bearers, with the bier on their shoulders, and a procession of perhaps fifty mourners in their white robes walking two abreast, each pair holding a handkerchief. The Parsee accounts say that the body is received by two bearded attendants at the entrance to the towers, and that by them the shroud is removed and then vultures do the rest. This is probably what happened that day.

All I could note on this occasion was a sudden movement of the vultures in the palm trees. There seemed to be hundreds of them. They paused for a minute on the outer edge of one of the towers and then disappeared within. In a few minutes they reappeared.

The Parsee method of disposing of the dead is, perhaps, as the Parsees say, more sanitary than the Christian burial in the earth, or even than the Hindu cremation. It meets the tenet of their faith that fire, water and earth are too sacred to be polluted. But the western mind cannot become accustomed to it.

In conclusion, it may be said that there are other New Year observances in India besides the New Year of the Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus and Parsees. There is a Chinese colony in Bentinck street, Calcutta, and the Chinese there observe the New Year as they do in the United States, or in any other section of the world in which they are found.