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

CHAP. III.] GOOD SENSE PREVAILS. ITs

and similar terms, and further imsulted them by pretending to observe fast on their new year’s day. The writer of these pages well remembers when he was a boy seeing a lazy bull wandering about the streets of Bombay, being teased by mischief-making Shehenshai boys, who shouted at him ‘“ Churigar.” This irritated the brute as much as if a red rag had been shown him, and the boys, while running away from the onset of the animal, cried out: “Lo, the ‘churigar’ is angry; even the brute does not lke being called a ‘ churigar.’”

When the strife was at its height a feeling of strong dislike had sprung up among them to give or take daughters in marriage from the one side to the other; but the Parsis, with their natural shrewdness, soon saw the stupidity and disadvantage of indulging their resentment in this form. When they found that their interests were affected by their prejudices they wisely gave ear to better counsels. There is consequently no bar at present to intermarriage between the two sects, and this has to a great extent been the means of obliterating all those party feelings which ran so high at the time of the “ Kabisa” controversy. There are to-day in many families a Shehenshai husband and a Kadmi wife, or vice versd, and the children of such parents invariably follow the sect to which their father belongs.

We have said before that there is no important