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

CHAP. VIL] STUDENTS’ LITERARY SOCIETY. 305

plainly saw that their own domestic life could not be rendered happy if their wives remained uneducated, nor could the Parsi community be said to have made any great advance from a moral or social point of view if their women continued in a state only worthy of a semi-barbarous age and society. They perceived that, if the seeds of education were to be generally spread, they should first germinate with the gentler sex. The influence which a mother or sister exercises upon a child was fully appreciated, and the youths, perhaps enthusiastically, determined to do some service to their country and countrymen by earnestly directing their attention to the cause of female education. The Students’ Literary and Scientific Society * proved the great medium for the exposition of the feelings and sentiments of these young men. Numerous essays on the social condition of the women of India were read there, and the necessity of education as a means of raising them in the social scale was emphatically pointed out. Discussions on these subjects appeared in newspapers, magazines, and afterwards in lectures to the vernacular branches of the 1 This society was composed of professors, masters, students, and ex-students of the Elphinstone Institution. It was in a somewhat languishing condition before the arrival of Professors Patton and Reid. On their joining the society a new life and impetus were given to it. Forty-six students, Parsis as well as Hindus, were members. In the first session, after Professors Patton and Reid had joined the society,

twenty meetings were held, at which thirty-five essays were read and discussed, most of the questions treated being of a social character.

VOL. I. x