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

42 HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [CHAP, I.

ous feast, to which all the officials of the place were invited. Wine flowed freely, and the guests heartily indulged themselves. During this bacchanalian feast the Parsis, accompanied by music and dancing, took the opportunity of making their exit out of the city. Their stratagem succeeded so well that they made their way without molestation to Kalyan, twenty miles south of Thana, and settled there. Thana was thus deserted by the Parsis for about three centuries. In the year 1774, however, they returned after the English took possession of it by the terms of a treaty made with a Maratha Sardar Ragunathrao Dada Saheb. Kavasji Rastamji, Patel, or head man, of Bombay, was induced by the Enelish to encourage the Parsis to settle at Thana once more, and in order to accomplish this he himself went with his family to that city for a time, and was entrusted with the patelship of Charnibanda, Munpesar, Trombay, Muth, Murve, Manori, Vesava, Danda, Bandora, Kalyan, Bhimardi, and other places in Salsette.

Travellers in India of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries found Parsis im many parts of the country, but their numbers must have been very insignificant, for there is no important event men-

1 Tn 1614 a Parsi “dastur” of the name of Azar Keyan Bin Azar Gosp died at Patna at the patriarchal age of eighty-five. He was an intelligent and a pious man. His early years were spent in seclusion

and prayer in Persia, and at the age of twenty-eight he arrived in India and settled at Patna in Hindustan. He had brought with him