The women are fair-complexioned, with a delicate brunette tinge, with large eyes and regular features, often exquisitely formed, owing to their dress being freed from anything like pressure on the body; but they rob themselves of a part of their beauty by the custom of concealing their beautiful hair under white linen bands bound around the brow. They wear very wide silk trousers, gathered and fastened at the ankles, over this a silk tunic, often descending in graceful folds to the feet and bound at the waist, while a deep, wide scarf of silk or some other light texture gracefully drapes the whole person and serves at once the double purpose of a head-dress and a veil. They occupy in their homes a much more honorable position than either the Hindoo or Moslem women. They enjoy almost as much freedom as European women. I used to meet them in the streets and bazaars, driving in their open carriages, surrounded by their bright, happy-looking children. So careful are the Parsees of their national honor that in the whole island of Bombay there exists neither paupers nor prostitutes among the followers of this religion. Polygamy is unknown among them. A wife can only be put away for immoral conduct. She is tried by the Punchayet or Parsee court, and if found guilty repudiated amid the whole assembly; formerly she was put to death. The ceremonies attending the death of a Parsee are very singular. When a person is about to die he is conveyed to the ground-floor, washed in consecrated water, and his face anointed with holy oil. A lamp or lamps lighted from the sacred fire in the temple are placed by the dying man's bed, and priests stand before him with folded arms crossed on their breasts, and pray for him in a most earnest and beautiful chant. When life becomes quite extinct the body is clothed in a new white cotton shirt of nine seams and a sort of apron, which is thrown over the face. This is bound by a new and sacred girdle of seventy-two threads. The body is then placed on an oblong stone on the floor. But the most curious part of all is, that along with the Fire-priests the house-dog is brought in, and after they have offered up prayer and praise in the presence of the assembled family, the dog is taken up to the dead body of his friend and master and exhorted to conduct him safely into paradise. If the dog should lick affectionately, as heretofore, the face, or even hands or feet, of his dead friend, it is held as a most auspicious sign of the dead man's ready admittance into heaven. It is but just to add here that the more refined and intelligent Parsees have outgrown this absurd custom and superstition; but the more ignorant certainly believe that every dog has an angel spirit residing in some star, whence it issues forth to convey the souls of the good safely into heaven.[26]