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

48 HISTORY OF THE PARSTS. [CHAP. I.

after another fourteen years (7.e. A.D. 1331) they bore the sacred fire to Navysari, where the Parsis had already become an opulent and influential race. But, remembering that A.D. 1419 is generally accepted as the year in which the sacred fire was brought to Navysari, it may well be presumed that between the flight of the Parsis from Sanjan and the recovery of their influence and freedom in religious worship a period of not twenty-six but of a hundred years must have elapsed.

From Navsari the fire was removed to Surat in the year 1783, as about that time there was some apprehension on account of the Pindari inroads into that city. It was again removed to Navsari three years later, when, owing to disputes among the priesthood, it was transferred in 1741 to Balsar, and after being there for some time it was taken to Udvada on the 28th October 1742, where it still exists. On account of its being the oldest fire-temple of the Zoroastrians in India, it is held by them in the highest possible veneration.’

Nothing worth chronicling is known of the history of those Parsis who, before the overthrow of the Hindu

1 The building in which this sacred fire is now located was built in the year 1830 at the expense of Messrs. Dadabhai and Mancherji Pestanji Wadia, in memory of their father, Pestanji Bamanji Wadia. When originally brought to Udvada it was kept in a place built at the expense of a Parsi of Nargol. Thence it was removed to a building provided by one Bhikhaji Edalji of Surat, and subsequently to another erected by Jamshedji Nanabhai Gazdar of Bombay.