To effectually cure this evil, the panchayat decreed that any Parsee woman met in the streets after sunset unaccompanied by a servant bearing a lantern should be arrested by the officials who serve at burials and conveyed to Nasukhama, a place where the dead are deposited to wait the final burial, there to pass the night. The terror which this decree inspired among the women is indescribable and since the edict was passed no Parsee woman has been seen in the streets of Bombay after sunset. It was not the gloomy deadhouse alone which was so revolting. The contact with one who handled the dead was far more dreadful, for, according to the doctrines of Zoroaster, to touch one who handles the dead is to be so polluted as never after to become clean.

The rooting out of other superstitions has been easier. The increasing numbers of European settlers in Bombay with modern ideas has done more than all the laws to destroy them. Some of their superstitious practices were of a very injurious character. Among others the custom, on the anniversary of a Parsee's death, of sending to all the relatives of the deceased invitations to a grand and sumptuous dinner; distributing presents of fruits, confectionary and various other gifts, — a custom ruinous to the poorer classes of Zoroastrians. To remedy this evil the panchayat fixes at two hundred the maximum number of invited guests, allowing this only on condition that the feast shall consist simply of rice and curry. Another custom still more lamentable prevailed among the women. On the death of a husband's friend they met together at the house of the deceased, there every day for a month to weep and beat their breasts and lament to such a degree as seriously to injure their health. This custom the panchayat modified by a decree limiting the time for their violent lamentations to three days for a child and ten days for an adult. Other sensible and beneficial restrictions have been imposed greatly to the advantage of the Parsees.

At the present day, however, the Parsee panchayat is of little importance legally. Its role is reduced to taking charge of the charitable funds provided by and for the use of the

sect. Yet they still have a special legislative code quite distinct from that of the Hindoo and Mohommedan for the regulation of their marriages, their divorces and their inheritances; the supreme court of Bombay having given them authority to form a code of laws conformable to their usages and religion. The work was difficult and laborious being discussed for thirty years from 1835 to 1865. Two judges appointed by the supreme court of England and two influential Parsees, one representing the sect in Bombay, the other a delegate from Surat constituted the counsel. The code finally decided upon and at present in use in many respects resembles the English.

The wife can inherit her husband's property only if given her by his will. This law is the same as that in use among the ancient Magi, but it has been recognized by legislators as contrary to the spirit of the religion of Zoroaster, and is likely soon to be modified. A marriage is legal only when celebrated according to the Magian ceremony called Arhishad and performed by a Magian priest. Bigamy is strictly forbidden, but the new code decrees that if husband or wife absent themselves from the conjugal abode for seven years, a divorce is legal; desertion and bad conduct being necessary to this. In all other acts of civil life the Parsees are governed by the general laws of the country.

II. Long before having been placed under the protection of this code the descendants of the Magi had commenced business in Bombay, and many had accumulated colossal fortunes rivalling the Rothschilds and even the Vanderbilts. From the year 1660 they had been in trade with the Portuguese, the Dutch and Armenian merchants. When the English penetrated these rich territories and founded there the most flourishing of their colonies they soon recognized the superior intelligence, honesty and commercial enterprise of the Parsees, and by wise and just treatment, above all by placing them on a footing of real equality with themselves secured their confidence as well as their gratitude for protection against the daily insults and outrages to which they had been subjected from the Mussulman part of the population. They made them the agents of their vari

ous commercial operations, and it is even averred that, without the aid of these obscure auxiliaries, the English would never have succeeded in successfully competing with the Portuguese and the Dutch already long in possession of the field.

Feeling themselves strongly supported, the Parsees little by little threw off the timidity and humility of fugitive exiles, and soon began to operate on their own account, to acquire certain monopolies in manufactuers and to extend their business relations in a truly wonderful way. After a few years of patient experiment, it became evident that of all the population of India the Parsees were the best silk-weavers, the most skilful porcelain manufacturers, and the most able builders. The famous Indian fabrics turned out of their manufactories, were soon eagerly sought by those among the Western nations who loved luxurious tissues and elegant designs, while the perfection they attained in creating the most marvellous shawls in the world still excites admiration.

In 1735 a plant for ship-building was created in Bombay by the English, and it was to a Parsee family of great celebrity in India by the name of Wadia that its management was entrusted. During more than a hundred years this family had the monopoly of ship-building in India, year by year sending out vessel after vessel until a great fleet representing enormous capital was the result. In other parts of Hindostan their activity was marvellous. While at Surat they made themselves known by their silk tissues, they transformed the dead city of Bairuth into a second Manchester. Their cotton plantations and manufactures enriched the country. At Bombay there was not an important transaction that did not pass through their hands. They were appointed collectors of the government revenues, the architects of its monuments and public edifices. To extend still further their commercial negotiations they established agencies almost everywhere in the East; at Madras, on the coast of Coromandel, at Java in the Dutch Indies, at Port Louis on the Isle of France, at Hong Kong and at Aden. Their commerce with China was enormous and enormously lucrative. But leaving their methods of rolling up

wealth; we turn our attention to the uses they make of it. The Parsees owe their celebrity not so much to the wealth they have amassed as to the royal way they are dispensing it.

Of the Parsees of Hindostan the most munificent in his gifts is, perhaps, the late Sir Jamshedje Jijibai. Independent of the large number of charitable institutions he founded, of the costly cemeteries he established, for the Parsee cemeteries differ completely from those of any other people, as we shall see further on, he founded and endowed eleven colleges for boys and eleven schools for girls. After the great disasters in Cabul, in which many thousands of Sepoys and Europeans perished under the snow; after the famine many years ago in Scotland and Ireland; after the battles of Alma and Inkerman, which made so many orphans in England, the hand of Sir Jamshedje was opened with unstinted liberality. Thousands

after thousands of dollars were poured out for the relief of the great armies of sufferers, until they had no further need of his money. So in other cases where need was the same stream of beneficence flowed swiftly to their aid. It may be said that this great generosity is exceptional among the Parsees. Perhaps it may be so, but there is at this moment before my eyes a paragraph now going the round of the public prints, which reads thus:

"The Parsees of Bombay have long been famous for their charitable munificence, and the example of the late Sir Jamsetjie Jejebhai, known throughout the civilized world for his liberality, is being emulated at the present day by another ParSir Dinshaw Manockjee Petit, sheriff of Bombay, has just offered the government of Bombay one and one-half laks [seventy-five thousand dollars], for the purpose of establishing a female college in that city."

see.

Education among the earlier Parsees while in exile had been but moderate. Beyond religious instruction they were simply taught reading, writing, and the four rules of arithmetic. But no sooner had European scholars begun to make their appearance in India for other purposes than money-making, than the Magians were seized with the desire to increase their intellectual,

knowledge. They began by completely mastering the English language, which was indispensable in carrying on business successfully with the representatives of the great commercial houses of London; and when, in 1820, the Hon. Mount Stuart Elphinstone arrived as Governor of Bombay, and the first care of that high functionary was to create a college where all the children might have an opportunity to acquire a thorough education, the first and most ardent to seize the opportunity were the Parsees; and their youth were soon deep in the mysteries of foreign languages, the sciences, and philosophy.

Not a Parsee neglected to give his son a good education, and only a year or two ago the Parsees poured out through their panchayat no less a sum than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to increase the number of professors in this college and pay them a better salary. In the Elphinstone Institution, in the Catholic school of St. Francis Xavier, in the Jesuit College, and many others founded by individuals, the Parsee children invariably lead the schools, although vastly inferior in numbers to the Hindoos and Mohammedans.

When in 1842 Jamshetje Jejebhai received from Her Majty Queen Victoria the title of Baronet, and the newly ereated nobleman offered to his co-religionists the vast sum of two hundred thousand dollars to aid the poor of his sect and give instruction to their children, the panchayat immediately voted two hundred and fifty thousand dollars more for the same object, and on the seventeenth of October, 1849, they opened in Bombay four schools for boys and the same number for girls. Such has been the march of education in this city that in 1883 one hundred and seventy Parsee students received the diploma of Bachelor of Arts. Since then several of these graduates have become engineers, lawyers, judges, professors, physicians, and journalists. They are everywhere; in the Banks, the manufactories, the publishing houses; many even acting as correspondents for the English and other journals. Recently another and bolder step has been taken, and a new direction given to the aims of women. Some one proposed that the English girls should study medicine and enter the medical profession, and at once