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

CHAP. VI.] FIRST NATIVE PROFESSOR. 295

Within the last forty years the Parsis have made remarkable progress in all branches of education. A few years after the establishment of the Elphinstone Institution and College a large number of the Parsi youth educated within its walls began to occupy useful positions in the community, and some obtained distinguished posts in the Institution and College. Mr. Dadabhai Naorozji was the first native of India appointed to the chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Referring to his appomtment, the Board of Education, in its report to Government,

said :—

“We gladly availed ourselves of the opportunity of confirming Mr. Dadabhai Naorozji as Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, the duties of which he had been performing to our entire satisfaction for nearly two years. We feel sure that the distinction he has thus-won by a long and laborious devotion to mathematical studies, and by an able discharge of his duties in the Institution, will stimulate him to still greater exertions. Much will depend upon the result of this first nomination of a native of India to be a professor in the Elphinstone Institution. The honour conferred upon him is great, but the responsibility attached to it is still greater. It is now twenty-eight years since the subject of the Elphinstone professorships first came under consideration, with the view of commemorating the high sense entertained by the natives of Western India of the public and private character of the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, on his retirement from the Government of this Presidency. At a public meeting, held in the library of the Native Education Society in August 1827, a resolution was unanimously passed that the most appropriate and durable plan for accomplishing this object would be to found professorships for teaching ‘the English language and the arts, the sciences, and literature of Europe.’