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

cHAP, 1] ZHE KABISA CONTROVERSY. 109

accession as well as by the establishment of a firetemple. But beyond an occasional ebullition of temper everything went on smoothly between the two sects till fifty or sixty years ago, when Bombay became the theatre of a very hot discussion on the vexed question of the difference between the two dates.

The Kadmis computed their year fully one month in adyance of the Shehenshais, and this can be best understood by the European reader when it is explained that whereas the new year of the Kadmis commences on the 19th of August that of the Shehenshais begins on the 19th of September. This celebrated discussion is known by every Parsi as the intercala-

tion or ‘ Kabisa” controversy. Mulla Firoz,! who

1 Mulla Firoz succeeded his father as “dastur” or high priest of the Kadmis in 1802. He had acquired a great reputation as a scholar, besides being distinguished for his piety and irreproachable character. When eight years old his father took him to Persia, where he acquired a sound and scholarly knowledge of the Persian and Arabic languages. His original name was Peshotan, but he was afterwards named Firoz on account of his intelligence. He was the author of several works. In 1786 he wrote in Persian Derich Kherde Manjumi, containing a description of his and his father’s travels, He was engaged by the Hon. Mr. Jonathan Duncan, then Governor of Bombay, to teach him the Persian language, and with Mr. Duncan’s assistance he translated into English a good portion of the Dassatir. The governor, however, died before the completion of the translation, but Mulla Firoz asked Mr. William Erskine to complete it, and published it in the year 1819. Mulla Firoz’s greatest work was the George Nama, a poem on the conquest of India by the English. Unfortunately, however, he died before its completion, which was undertaken and finished by his heir and successor Dastur Rastamji Kaikobadji, and dedicated to Her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.