Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Parsees
Some of the religious ceremonies and__customs are good in themselves from a sanitary or hygienic point of View. AS Prof. Max Muller says There is a reason at the bottom of everything, however, it seems unreasonable to us, in the customs and laws of the ancient world. 1 What is said of the old symbolism stands good, to a certain extent, for some old customs The Symbolism of to-day preserves the serious belief of yesterday and what, in an age more or less distant, was a vital motive, inspiring an appropriate course, of conduct, survives in the conduct it has inspired, long after it has itself ceased to be active and powerful. But, we find that, at times, too much of even a good thing spoils that thing. This is so in the case of some religious ceremonies and cus toms. We find that, very particularly, in the case of some purificatory ceremonies, for example, the Bareshnum. The original good simple ideas of purity, viz., freedom from contact with the impure, and isolation, if infection or impurity is caught or is believed to have been caught, are, at times, carried to tiresome extremes. No wonder, if they were SO carried to extremes in olden times, when we see, that cases of that kind happen even in modern times, under an alarm or panic of a sudden epidemic, as that of Plague in Bombay in 1896-97. However, such extremes tend to obscure the original good object.
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