50 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



what is now Persia, where they ruled in magnifi- 

 cence and glory. Many centuries before the opening 

 of the Christian era, their religion was founded by 

 Zoroaster a monotheistic faith based on the en- 

 lightened principle of a single right-loving deity, the 

 maker, preserver, and ruler of the universe, and 

 teaching the advanced doctrine of the resurrection 

 of the body. When, in the seventh century, A. D., 

 the Persian Empire was destroyed by the Saracens, 

 and the great mass of the nation forced to adopt 

 Islamism, a small number still adhered to the Zoro- 

 astrian faith, and in order to escape persecution fled 

 into the Persian province of Korasan, whence they 

 eventually migrated into India. To-day the num- 

 ber of Parsees all told scarcely reaches one hundred 

 thousand souls, of which over seventy-five per cent 

 are said to live in the Bombay Presidency, and 

 nearly fifty thousand in the city of Bombay itself. 

 The extraordinary thing is that, through all these 

 centuries, while living in the midst of the vast all- 

 absorbing Hindu population, this handful of people 

 has remained unabsorbed, retaining its individuality 

 and handing down its customs, characteristics, and 

 religion from generation to generation in essentially 

 the same form in which they were received from 

 its Persian ancestors ages ago. 



In point of education and business ability, the 



