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

CHAP. II. ] NASAREDIN SHAH. 81

the Zoroastrians must be dealt with in the same manner as our other subjects are treated. “‘Given at Teheran in the month of Ramzan, 1299 (August, 1882).—Translated by (Signed) “J. IBRAHIM.”

Such was the happy issue of a long-sustained and well-fought battle by the Parsis of Bombay against this grievous and obnoxious impost on behalf of a remote and obscure, albeit kindred, community. No one who reflects on their complete disinterestedness as well as their unflagging persistency can help being impressed with the conviction that their action throughout was highly laudable, and calculated to shed no common lustre on the records of Bombay philanthropy. During a period of twenty-three years the managers of the Persian Amelioration Fund had spent about Rs.109,564 in contributions towards the

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payment of the “jazia.” The major portion of this sum had been subscribed by local munificence, as the Zoroastrians of Yezd and Kerman were never in a position to pay for themselves without such assistance, so that when the royal firman was promulgated in 1882 loud were the praises of the Parsis, both in India and the mother-country. The present Shah is the first of the Persian monarchs, after a lapse of thirteen centuries, to show clemency and justice towards the children of the original Persians by putting them on a footing of equality with his other subjects. The name of Nasaredin Shah will VOL. I. G