The Parsees of India 



53 i 



EMIGRATION TO INDIA 



When the Persian Empire of Sassa- 

 nides was destroyed by the Saracens 

 in 651 A. D., the great mass of the 

 nation was forced to adopt the faith of 

 Islamism, the religion of their Moham- 

 medan conquerors ; but a small num- 

 ber clung to the old Zoroastrian faith 

 and took refuge in the wilderness of 

 the Persian province of Khorasan. 

 After much wandering and enduring 

 great persecution and hardship, they, 

 in the eighth century, emigrated to 

 India and made a settlement at Sanjan, 

 in the neighborhood of Surat. Here 

 they lived in the Sanjan country for 

 some seven hundred years in tranquillity 

 and in full enjoyment of their religious 

 rites, under the government of the 

 Hindoo rajahs of Sanjan, Guzerat. 



They chiefly occupied themselves in 

 agriculture and industrial pursuits. It 

 is said that they not only turned the 

 face of the territory they occupied from 

 a dreary jungle into a fruitful garden 

 and made it blossom as the rose, but 

 they also enjoyed considerable pros- 

 perity. 



About the time of the discovery of 

 America the Hindoo rajah's govern- 

 ment, under which they lived, was over- 

 thrown by a Mohammedan-Afghan con- 

 queror. The Parsees, with a high char- 

 acter for fidelity , were loyal to the Indian 

 kings, who had given them and their 

 ancestors a welcome when they had been 

 driven from their own Persian homes 

 by the same foe. They gathered their 

 forces to the standard of the rajahs, 

 and proved themselves of great valor. 

 The result of the campaign was, how- 

 ever, one of disaster. They were finally 

 dispersed from the Sanjan country and 

 compelled to seek new homes in other 

 parts of Guzerat. 



It was probably some time after this 

 event, though there does not seem to ex- 

 ist any authoritative record of the exact 

 date when the Parsees arrived in Bom- 

 bay. It may, however, be safely said 



that their settlement in that island was 

 some time before Bombay was ceded to 

 the British, in 1669, by the King of 

 Portugal, as a dowry of Catherine, Prin- 

 cess of Braganza, who became the wife 

 of Charles the Second of England. 



As a sect in Persia they have disap- 

 peared under religious persecutions, and 

 have sunk into ignorance and poverty, 

 though still preserving a reputation for 

 honesty, industry, and obedience to law 

 superior to that of other Persians. 



THEY HAVE RETAINED THEIR INDI- 

 VIDUALITY FOR 1,200 YEARS 



There seems to be no authoritative in- 

 formation as to the number composing 

 the first exodus to India, or if the Parsee 

 colony was ever materially increased by 

 early additions from Persia. Some tra- 

 ditions have it that there was a paucity 

 of females among them, and that they 

 intermarried with Hindoo women on 

 their first coming to India. This tra- 

 ditional intimation of racial mixture is 

 not well received by the Parsee people 

 of today. However it may have been, 

 there is one thing certain, that if ever the 

 practice did occur it surely was short- 

 lived, as no custom of today is more re- 

 ligiously observed than that of inter- 

 marriage among their own people. 



For some 1 , 200 years they have lived 

 among the all-absorbent Hindoos, yet this 

 mere handful of people have not been ab- 

 sorbed. During the last 300 years the 

 transmissive influence of an Anglo-Saxon 

 civilization has been reflected upon them, 

 yet they remain Parsees still. India has 

 in turn been conquered and reconquered 

 by all the great nations of history, from 

 Greek to Britain. Her conquerors have 

 each shaped the affairs of half of the 

 earth. The possession of the Indian 

 Peninsula seems an indispensable re- 

 quirement for sovereignty in the East. 

 Internecine wars, racial strifes, and caste 

 prejudices have robbed her of her own; 

 pestilence and famine have blighted her 

 fairest flower; yet during all these cen- 

 turies, amid all the vicissitudes of oriental 



