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

40 HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [CHAP. 1.

century, because a “ dokhma,” or tower of silence for the disposal of the dead, was built there in the year 1309 by a Parsi named Pestanji. The ruins of an older one still are to be seen at Vajalpur, a suburb of Broach. Some accounts state that direct migration from Persia to the several cities in Gujarat occupied by their kinsmen took place long after the landing of the first colony at Sanjan.

The Parsi settlements at Thana and Chaul must also have been founded at an early date, as reference is always made to them by Mahomedan and other travellers of early times in the accounts they give of those two places. Although not mentioned by name, yet from their descriptions we may conclude that the Parsis are the race spoken of, and the idea is confirmed by what Oderic, an Italian monk who travelled in India in the beginning of the fourteenth century, says —“The people thereof (Thana) are idolaters, for they worship fire and serpents and trees also, and here they do not bury the dead, but carry them with great pomp to the fields and cast them to the beasts and birds to be devoured.” As the natives of India either burn or bury their dead, the above must apply to the Parsis, who subsequently deserted this place in a body. ‘Traditionary accounts of Thana give an amusing instance of the manner in which these people escaped wholesale conversion from the religion of their forefathers to that of Christianity. That the