History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

CHAP, VI.] COMMERCIAL PROBITY. 261

India, for instance at Mozambique and Zanzibar, Parsi traders are also to be found.

The commercial morality of the Parsis has always ranked high. Complete strangers have borne testimony to this. They have always been upright and honourable in their dealings. It is within the recollection of many old Parsis that among themselves, as well as with the “bania” merchants, written agreements were unknown. Their word was their bond, and the same system was extended to most of the Europeans with whom they had dealings. Sir Charles Forbes, the head of the great house of Forbes and Co. in Bombay, in reply to an address given to him on his departure for Europe about fifty years ago by the native merchants, who were then mostly Parsis, said that “an experience of two and twenty years enabled him with pride and satisfaction to declare that in the intercourse he had with them he had witnessed acts of generosity, fidelity, and honour, which could not in any country be surpassed.” “To have been connected with such men,” he added, “for so long a period was an advantage which he would never cease to acknowledge, and to obtain their confidence and esteem was a distinction which of the Parsi community of the place, and a man of great energy, enterprise, and liberality. He has founded a charitable reading-room and library in Bombay and a fire-temple at Aden. He had the high

honour of reading the address of welcome to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales on his arrival at Aden on his way to Bombay,