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

38 AIISTORY OF THE PARSTS. [CHAP. I.

India it appears that the Parsis had largely settled in many cities of Upper India before the middle of the ninth century. Whether they went there from Western India or direct overland from Persia by subsequent migrations 1t is now impossible tosay. A Mahomedan traveller in the middle of the ninth century, Al Istakhiri, makes mention of some parts of Hind and Sind as having been occupied by the ‘“‘Guebres,’ the name generally applied to the Parsis by Mahomedan writers. Ibrahim the Ghaznavid is said to have attacked in A.p. 1079 a colony of “‘ fireworshippers” at Dehra Dun, which shows that there were Parsis in the city prior to that event. That there were Parsis in the Panjab before a.pD. 1178 rests upon more certain evidence, as a Parsi priest named Mahyar is affirmed to have gone in that year from Uch, a city at the meeting of the five rivers of the Panjab, to Seistan in Persia, for the purpose of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the religious rites of the Parsis. After six years of study under learned “dasturs” in Persia he returned to India im 4.p. 1184 with a copy of the Pehlevi translation of the Vendidad, an important work on the Parsi religion. There appears to have been communication between the Cambay and the Panjab Parsis, as in A.D. 1323 the former possessed copies of the Vendidad which were brought from Persia by Mahyar. In the accounts of Timur’s invasion of India we find the Parsis referred