Paupers and criminals are disposed of in a barbarous and revolting manner. At one of the city temples a flock of vultures, numbering over a hundred, is kept. The vultures are repulsive, dirty-looking birds who sit stolidly hour by hour upon the roof or walls of the temple, apparently without life or motion except when a body is brought for their repast. Then they become keenly excited at the prospect of the coming feast, for which, however, they must first do battle with the crowd of pariahs that also haunt the vicinity of the same temple. They flock down with noisy croaking and great flapping of wings, but are beaten off by the attendants, who first prepare the body for the feast by cutting it open in different places with large sharp knives. They cast a few pieces of flesh to the dogs and then retire. In a second the body is hidden by the birds, who settle upon it from head to foot. Nothing is to be seen but a compact mass of quivering feathers. The vultures gorge themselves with the flesh, never ceasing as long as anything remains to be consumed, unless it be to make a vicious grab at the head of some venturesome pariah who dares to interfere with their enjoyment of the feast. It is a sickening spectacle, and its only merit is that it is safer from a sanitary point of view to allow the flesh to be eaten in this way than to bury it beneath the damp soil near some human dwelling. The meal over, the feathered cannibals return to their perches upon roof and wall. The relatives gather up the clean white bones, put them loosely in a wooden coffin, light wax tapers, and bearing the coffin with them, march three times round the funeral pyre. They then light the fire, place the coffin on the burning fuel, and scatter sweetly smelling incense in the leaping flames. There are two spirits who watch over and take charge of all burning-places. They are familiarly spoken of as the "Grandfather cocoa-nut shell," and the "Grandmother cocoa-nut shell."