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

CHAP. I.] PERSIA AND PARSI. Il

prey to hordes of barbarians from Arabia, whom they had been wont to despise. Peace and luxury seem to have done their enervating work on a once hardy and warlike people, and the mighty fabrie which the arms of earlier rulers had raised fell prostrate at one stroke before the feet of the rude and fanatical Arab invader on the field of Nahavand.

This is but a slight and passing sketch of the early greatness of the people from whom the Parsis claim an uninterrupted descent, and whose traditions they still cherish with unabated fondness as those of ancestors whose blue blood still runs in their veins in all its original purity. Their designation of Parsi is derived from their native country, Pars or Fars. That province contained Persepolis, the chief city of the empire, and the most splendid of the royal palaces. From it m course of time the whole kingdom gained a name.

To give a, short history of the arrival of the Parsis in India, and a description of their manners, customs, religion, and present position, is the object of this work, and we now begin our task by briefly deseribing how the kingdom of Persia passed into Arab hands.

It was in the time of Ardeshir the Third that the fanatical and ambitious spirit evoked by Mahomed expanded into the bold design of invading and conquering the land of the Persian. The first invasion began by order of Khalif Omar, A.D. 633, when