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

CHAP. I.] PARSI SETTLEMENTS. 39

to under the name of Magians, as being among the captives taken by him. The people who have been described as believing “in the two principles of good and evil, and acknowledging Yazdan (God) and Ahreman (Devil),” and who offered a fierce resistance to Timur at Tuglikhpur, were undoubtedly Parsis. It is said that the Gujarat colony was strengthened by a large number of Parsis who fled from the tyranny of that cruel conqueror. The mention by a Mahomedan writer of the destruction of fire-altars by the Emperor Sikandar in A.D. 1504 shows that long before that date a large number of Parsis must have lived in several cities of Upper India. Sir H. M. Elliot in his Mistory of India supports Professor Dowson’s opinion that the Guebres of Rohilkhand, the Magyas of Malwa, and the Maghs of Tughlikhpur are relics of the old Upper Indian Parsis, though they seem to have no religious peculiarities at the present day. From a manuscript account of Mount Abu by Sir Alexander Burnes, referred to in the Bombay Gazetteer, it appears that about the middle of the fifteenth century there was a Parsi settlement at Chandravli near Mount Abu. The Parsis are supposed to have settled in Anklesvar in the middle of the thirteenth century of the Christian era, as the Visparad, one of the religious books of the Parsis, is believed to have been copied there in the year A.D. 1258. There is no doubt they were established at Broach before the commencement of the fourteenth