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

CHAP, VI.] PARST LOVALTY. 273

Asiatic race, and that is their loyalty to the British crown. Under whatever form of Government the Parsis have lived in India, they have always been noted for their loyalty to their rulers. They were loyal to their Hindu chiefs, as was well proved when they shed their own blood in defending the territory of the Rana of Sanjan, who extended to them a kind welcome after their exile from Persia.

As subjects of the British crown, it is admitted on all hands that among the natives of India the Parsis are undoubtedly the most loyal. Their loyalty is not one of empty show, nor the result of fear of a strong and powerful Government, but it is the offspring of deep-rooted conviction. When they compare their condition in India with that of their co-religionists in Persia, who were reduced until recently to a miserable state by persecution, they fully and rightly appreciate the blessings which they enjoy under the British Government. When they see that for more than ten centuries they had few opportunities of increasing their material prosperity, and that their own enterprise and spirit could bring them no reward; that it was with the arrival of Europeans and the advent of British power that they first began to emerge from obscurity and to rise step by step, as that power was extended in the country, and that they became perfectly free to exercise all their rights, civil as well as religious; that.

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