The China connection - III

Though Parsis were of crucial importance to several aspects of the history of modern China this has been neglected by Chinese scholars. Guo Deyan, a PhD in history who is chief of the department of the Preparatory Department of the Palace Museum of the Nanyue Want in Guangzhou and has done research on Chinese foreign relations, has attempted to fill this lacuna in his detailed study paper titled The Study of Parsee Merchants in Canton, Hong Kong and Macao. Parsiana has reproduced edited excerpts from his study. The first part dealt with the arrival of Parsi merchants in China and how they gained acceptance in that country by adapting to its culture. The second installment refered to the decline of prosperity. The final installment, carried in this issue, dwells on the resting places reserved for the deceased Parsis.

The "Parsi Ground” is located on the Parsi Hill, also called "White-Head Point” (bai tou ban) or "Golden Rooster Drinks Water” (jin ji yin shui), on Changzhou Island in Huangpu, which lies 38.9 metres above sea level.

Today in the Parsi Cemetery there remain at least nine tombs that we may safely conclude are the resting places of adults, arranged in line from north to south. The earliest and northernmost tomb dates from 1847, and the latest and southernmost from 1852. All that is left of the second tomb is three damaged pieces of the tombstone, one of which is inscribed in English, while the other two have Gujarati inscriptions. Although there are not many undamaged tombstones left, from the structure of their foundations it appears that all the adults’ tombs were originally the same size. The ninth tombstone is complete, and measures 90 cm wide by 55 cm high. Each tombstone is carved with two inscriptions, two meters in length, in English and Gujarati. English was the lingua franca adopted by the Parsis after they arrived in Bombay in the wake of the British; it was also the lingua franca of all India at the time. Gujarati was the language the Parsis learned when they fled Iran some 1,300 years ago and found safe haven in Gujarat, India. The Parsis have continued to use Gujarati ever since.

Each tombstone recorded the deceased’s name, religion, date of death, and age at death (or date of birth). For example, the fourth tombstone is engraved with the following inscription:

"To the Memory of Burjorjee Eduljee Kotwal Parsee Inhabitant of Bombay

Who Departed His Life at Canton

On the 1st Day of August 1850

and

The 9th Day of the 11th Month

of

Yazdezerd 1219

In the 36th Year of His Age”

The people buried in these tombs were all Parsis resident in Bombay. This indicates that the Parsi community in Guangdong province was comprised mainly of Parsis from Bombay, and provides evidence that trade between Guangzhou and Bombay occupied an important position in the Parsi trade. It is interesting to note that dates on the tombstones are recorded according to both the Christian calendar and the Persian calendar (Yazdezerd or Yerdejerdy). Yazdezerd was the reign title of the Persian king Yazdegerd III, the last king of the Sassanid dynasty.

To the west of the sixth adult tomb lie the tombs of a newborn baby and a girl, dated 1918 and 1923, respectively. However, these two tombs have been badly damaged, and only the upright tombstones remain. To the west of the adult tombs lies the tomb of a stillborn baby who was buried in 1919. The area occupied by this tomb is the same as that of the adult tombs and is made of granite, but the tomb itself is smaller than the adult tombs, and an upright tombstone stands at one end. The inscriptions on the tombstones of the three children are in English only, and record simply the names of their parents.

At the boundary of the cemetery stands a tablet engraved with English and Chinese inscriptions that read "Parsi Ground” and (ba si mu jie, or Parsi Cemetery). On the southern side of the cemetery stands a boundary stone, engraved on the front with the Chinese characters Panyu xian zheng tang ding jie (Boundary of Panyu District), and on the back with the character Nan jie (Southern Boundary). These inscriptions prove that in the Qing dynasty, the Panyu district government gave this plot to the Parsi community in Guangzhou to be used as a cemetery.

At the northern foot of Parsi Hill stands a two-storey building which the locals call "Parsi Building.” This was a branch of the Parsi factory in Guangzhou during the Qing Dynasty.

From the records of the Chinese and British negotiations with the Parsis over the question of renting land for a cemetery, it becomes clear that the main stumbling block was the fact that the Parsis, "in accordance with the teachings of Zoroastrianism, insisted on building a wall around the cemetery.”

But this was not just any wall. According to the Avesta, the sacred book of Zoroastrianism, it was called a dakhma. Europeans called it the "Tower of Silence;” in Chinese, it was translated as the "Tower of Silence,” the "Tower of Rest” or the "Tower of Loneliness.”

Parsis are devoutly religious. The reason that their ancestors fled from Persia to India in the eighth century was so that they would be able to continue practicing their Zoroastrian faith. India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru once wrote that most of the Parsis in India no longer had any connection to Persia, but were completely Indian; nevertheless, they stayed close to their traditions and never forgot their homeland.

Thus in the 19th century, when the terms of the Treaty of Nanjing stipulated that foreigners would have the right to rent land in China in which to bury their dead, the Parsis wanted to erect a dakhma on this land. However, due to the above-mentioned conflicts that arose in the negotiations around this problem, they were forced to build bamboo fences instead of stone walls. These bamboo fences fulfilled, to the minimal extent, the burial requirements in the Vendidad (part of the Avesta): "the worshippers of Mazda shall erect a building out of the reach of the dog, of the fox, and of the wolf; and wherein rain-water cannot stay.” This is evidence that, when circumstances did not permit them to observe their religious beliefs properly, the Parsis managed to use flexible ways to express their continued faith and devotion to the religion of their ancestors.

From our investigation of the Parsi cemetery in Huangpu, we can see that in building the cemetery, the Parsis referred both to their scriptures and to their own traditional customs, rather than just building a cemetery in any haphazard way. This conclusion is also borne out in the following examples (and here, in explaining the heritage of the Parsis in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macao, textual sources from these three cities play a crucial role).

Verses 13 to 18 of Chapter 5 of the Vendidad taught followers that "the worshippers of Mazda shall lay down the dead (on the dakhma) with his eyes towards the sun.” This is because the sun is the source of light. The Parsi Ground in Huangpu faces east, so it can receive the first ray of sunlight in the morning. We can understand this as a fulfilment of the teachings of the Avesta.

The layout of the Parsi Ground in Huangpu is the same as that of the Parsi Cemetery in Macao, which was built slightly earlier. The first Parsi tomb in Macao was erected in 1829, for Cursetjee Framjee. At the top of the tomb is a granite slab engraved with the following text in English:

"Truly the light is sweet,

And a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun,

But if a man lives many years and rejoices in them all,

Yet let him remember the days of darkness. For they shall be many,

All that cometh is vanity.”

The Parsi cemeteries in Huangpu and Macao have the same layout; the same text in Macao also reflects the religious beliefs of the Parsis in Huangpu. They believed that light and fire were the origins of goodness; thus the line, "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.” Although the Parsis in Huangpu could not lay out their dead upon the dakhma with their eyes facing the sun, by orienting the tombs towards the east, they were able to achieve a similar goal of "enjoying the light.”

The Parsis in Guangzhou had long-term dealings with Europeans; does this mean that their burial practices were influenced by Christian burial practices? Research shows that Parsi society and lifestyle did begin to become westernized early on, but their religious beliefs were not in the least influenced by Christianity. This holds true also for their cemetery, even though the British helped them acquire the land for the Parsi Ground.

A poem in Wang Zhaoyong’s book Aomen Za Shi (Some Macao Poems) describes the differences among foreign cemeteries in Macao. In the poem, he notes that there are separate cemeteries for "Westerners” (in this case, probably Portuguese), for "red-hairs” (Dutch and other northern Europeans), and for "white-heads;” the tombs in all three are richly adorned with fine engravings, sculptures, statues or crosses, but the styles and symbols in each cemetery are different. Sometimes, he remarks, visitors come in just to admire the atmosphere.

Although this is a description of the cemeteries in Macao, it also holds true for Huangpu. Today the Western cemetery on Changzhou Island in Huangpu has been restored, and we can see several obvious differences with the Parsi Ground.

There are no Parsi tombs inside the Christian cemetery, just as Parsi cemeteries are reserved solely for practitioners of Zoroastrianism. Through the process of "westernization,” the Parsi lived and conducted business quite harmoniously with Europeans, especially the British. However, there was a strict separation when it came to the construction of cemeteries. As in Macao, there are separate cemeteries for Parsis and Westerners in Guangzhou.

According to the teachings of Zoroastrianism, the Parsis were supposed to build walls around their cemeteries. However, the Westerners had no such requirement when they built their cemetery near the Parsi Ground in Chang­zhou. This much is evident in Qi Ying’s negotiations with John Francis Davis: "The westerners’ cemetery, located on nearby Ma On Shan Hill, is not surrounded by a wall, yet none of the more than 50 graves there have been damaged.”

Europeans do not believe in Zoroastrianism, so naturally they do not feel the need to build walls around their cemeteries. Conversely, statues and crosses are important symbols in Christian cemeteries, and they are very much in evidence in the Christian cemetery on Changzhou; but the Parsi Ground has no such symbols.

In Christian cemeteries, the appearance of the tombs is a very good marker of the gap between the rich and the poor; yet in the Parsi Ground, all the tombs are the same size. Indeed, the Portuguese Count of Arnoso, who accompanied Tomas de Sousa Rosa to the capital to sign the first Sino-Portuguese Treaty, made the following comment in his book Jornadas pelo Mundo:

"There are three cemeteries in Macao: the Catholic cemetery, the British cemetery, and the Muslim cemetery (author’s note: in fact he is referring to the Parsi cemetery). In the latter, the tombs are all exactly the same size; in other words, there is no way of knowing which tombs are for the wealthy and which for the poor. This is what we may consider a truly egalitarian cemetery.”

This egalitarian attitude so evident in the Macao Parsi Cemetery can also be found in what remains of the Parsi Ground in Huangpu today — the size and the materials used to build all nine of the adults’ tombs are almost exactly the same.

These differences between the Parsi and Christian cemeteries are very much rooted in the background of conflict between these two religions in India.

Concluded