TOWERS OF SILENCE. Tile structures upon which the Parsis (q.v.) and Gliebers (q.v.) expose the bodies of their dead to be devoured by vultures or dogs in accordance with the precepts of their religion as taught by Zoroaster (q.v.). The prescription for building these structures is as old as the Avesta (q.v.) where they are de scribed and called Dal:limas. The best modern specimens are to he seen on Malabar Hill, Bom bay, India. and across the Bombay Harbor at Doran; there is also one near Teheran and an other near Yezd in Persia, where the ruins of a deserted 'tower' are likewise to be seen. The older shape of the Dakhinas seems to have been rectangular: tile modern towers are circular, but less high than might be imagined. The best con structed are of massive stone or of bricks covered with cement. They are 20 or 30 feet high, 75 to 100 in diameter, and they resemble huge gas reservoirs iu form. The top is open to the sky; the floor below is built of large slabs resembling flagging-stones; in each slab is a slight depression called a pari in which the body is laid for the 'heaven-sent birds' to devour. Small ducts lead
from every pavi into the central pit where the bones are placed after the body has been denuded of flesh by the vultures, which is accomplished in a few hours. From this central well there run four carefully constructed drains, at right angles, to carry away any deposit that might remain and conduct it through chalk, quicklime, sand, and other absorbents lest the earth might be defiled by its contact. There is little, however, to be led off thus, for the tropical sun soon parches the bones and reduces them to dust. Herodotus (Hist. i. 140) alludes to this method of disposing of the dead in ancient Iran, and the Zoroastrians. who have kept it up till the present day, maintain that it is a solution of the sani tary question even in plague times. See Naraka, History of the Pom-sis (London, 1884) ; Modi, d Tower of Silence (Bombay, 1885) ; Jackson, "The Parsee Towers of Silence," in the Evening Post, June S (New York, 1901).