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

84 AIISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [CHAP. II.

tion proved too heavy for the committee’s resources, and the deficiency of income had for a time to be made up by transferring the general school funds to the boarding school account. It had, however, to be finally closed in March 1876, after an existence of ten years, and no attempt has, up to the present time, been made for its resuscitation.

Another direction in which the committee laboured for the welfare of their destitute and helpless brethren in Persia was in getting the daughters of poor parents or orphan girls of marriageable age settled in life, which their extreme poverty would otherwise have precluded. Such children were exposed to the serious danger of being perverted to Mahomedanism, and it is gratifying to add that, through the kindhearted liberality of many Parsi gentlemen and ladies of Bombay, their agent in Persia was enabled, between 1856 and 1865, to obtain resources sufficient to cover the expenses of the marriage of upwards of a hundred girls, who were thus saved from the dangers and temptations to which poverty exposed them in the midst of a licentious and truculent Mahomedan population. Amongst the contributors to this worthy object, the names of Sir Jamshedji Jijibhai, Mr. Manakji Nasarvanji Petit, Mr. Mervanji Framji Panday and his wife Bai Hirabai, Mr. Mancherji Hormasji Kama, and Mr. Rastamji Jamshedji

Jijibhai, deserve honourable mention.