Indian and Persian communities were never interrupted.

Under the Mogul rule, the Parsis continued to prosper. After having been tillers, toddy-drawers, carpenters, cabinet-makers, they became wealthy land-owners, ship-builders, and, in general, extensive traders. Their principal headquarters were Nausari, the priestly town; Surat, the great market of the East; Bombay, the dowry of the Portuguese bride of Charles II. Caste system had proved extremely beneficial in preserving their religious independence, but had left them totally unprejudiced, and had put no barrier between them and the foreigners. Hence the great advantage to them in mixing freely with the Europeans who were beginning to traffic with India; so that, far from keeping aloof from the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, they made their services acceptable and acted as middlemen between the new-comers and the natives. By degrees they supplanted the supple banyan, they became brokers of the factories, dubashes, shroffs. Their influence prevailed, and their pent-up energies at last found a vast field for developing themselves. Thanks to unexpected opportunities, an enterprising spirit, and no objection to sea voyages, they opened an extensive trade with the Far East, especially with China, Burma, and the Straits. In the mean

Banyan, a Hindu trader, and especially of the province of Guzarat. (See P. della Valle, i., 486-7, and Lord, Preface.)

† Shroff, a money-lender, a banker. (Ar. sarrâj, also sairaf.)

time, they were doing good and loyal service to the United East India Company. Such is the origin of their attachment to British rule and of the particular regard and esteem of the British government for them.

Europe also had early attracted them. In the seventeenth century a Parsi had already come over to England, and in the following century Maniar was Burke's guest at Beaconsfield.

Wealth rewarded the commercial skill and extreme honesty of the Parsi traders; it made them powerful and influential. Their liberality was universally known; such men as Sorabji Mancherji Readymoney and Ardeshir Dady fed thousands of people during the famines. Towers of silence, fire temples, dharmsálas,* charitable institutions, hospitals, colleges, were in turn erected by the munificent gifts of their merchant princes. Above all, they were remarkable for their spirit of catholicity, which recognized no difference of race, caste, and religion. Ovington, as early as 1689, had noticed this tendency. In 1842, Jamshedji Jijibhai, the Bombay merchant so well known in the whole of India for his charities, was honored with knighthood, and in 1857 was created baronet, the first native to whom this coveted distinction was granted.

Such was the situation of the community in the early fifties of the nineteenth century. At that time (1852) Briggs could write with accuracy that

Dharmsála (pious edifice), a resting-house for wayfarers.

"the bent of the Parsi community was purely commercial." He was perfectly right, and the evolution, which has turned an exclusively mercantile caste into the one priding itself most on its education and its intellectual pursuits, was only beginning to develop. It is nearly achieved, at least in the main lines. Nowadays, the Parsi is no more the broker, or dubash, of the European; he sits next to him on the benches of the corporations, in the high courts, at the Legislative and Vice-Regal Council-nay, even in Parliament. No wonder that such a contact has modified his customs and habits. What has become of the banyan's co-worker, once in dress and occupation so much like his rival that sometimes European travellers have confused the two? The Parsi has abandoned his white garments, his curved shoes; in India his brown pagri alone distinguishes him. On the Continent, he is an English gentleman.

This transformation that we are now witnessing is entirely due to Western education, and its influence on a race whose plasticity is undeniable, and whose powers of assimilation are of the rarest order. This will be seen presently.

II

The Parsis were the first natives to take advantage of Western education in the Bombay Presidency; as soon as the mission schools set

to work and the Elphinstone Institution afforded a chance for intelligent youths, the Parsis flocked to them, in order to benefit by the modern training and equip themselves for a new mode of life. This eagerness to learn had already incited their best men of the former generation to attend the schools of the Eurasians and retired soldiers for the purpose of mastering English. However, it was only in 1849 that the enlightenment of the bulk of the community was seriously undertaken by Sir Jamshedji Jijibhai, who established the Parsi Benevolent Institution for indigent Parsis. The schools soon imparted the blessings of education, free of charge, to thousands of pupils in Bombay and the Mofussil. Sir Jamshedji's example was followed by wealthy co-religionists, and instruction rapidly spread among the lower classes.

Nearly at the same time a spirit of reform had inflamed some generous, enterprising men, Furdunji Naorozji, Behramji Ghaudi, Manakji Kharshedji, Dadabhai Naorozji, who were later on joined by S. S. Bengali, K. N. Kabraji, and others. The reformers were bent on erasing from their family life and inner organization the old Hindu varnish, and they set diligently to work. Their task was not an easy one. In 1861 Mr. Dadabhai Naorozji, in a lecture delivered at the Liverpool Philo-Asiatic Society, explained the peculiar condition of his own community. He said:

"Under ordinary circumstances it may not be difficult to give a general account of the existing manners and customs

of a people; but, in the case of the Parsis, in the present transitional state of their social and intellectual condition, it is difficult to say what the whole community observe and believe."

He then established a distinction between the old class and the young one, the orthodox and the reformers, and gave a rapid description of the habits of both, one steeped in an obstinate Hindu conservatism, the other full of Western aspirations. The priestly influence had been appealed to by the two parties. And any one who desires to follow the phases of the struggle can peruse the old Guzarati reports of the associations started in order to support or refute each other's views. Female education formed, also, a serious part of the programme of the reformers. Parsi ladies were allowed to move about freely, to emancipate themselves from the secluded life which the Hindu fashion had compelled them to adopt. The Parsi's house was gradually becoming a happy home, instead of a gloomy zenana; the Parsi's wife was made his companion, his children his friends. "Just as the influence of English education had operated on their mental condition, the example of the English modes of life and domestic habits had worked a revolution in their social condition."

Journalism and politics first attracted the most educated; the community soon produced a group of able and qualified professors, barristers, architects, publicists, doctors, and scientists. The