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

CHAP. 1.] THE PARSIS IN BOMBAY. 51

the Parsis first gained some considerable importance and came into contact with Europeans. The earliest period at which we find any mention of them in this city of the Great Mogul is in the year 1478.

No authentic records exist to show the exact date of the arrival of the Parsis in Bombay, nor can we authoritatively explain what was the motive that first led them there. It seems probable that the English merchants of Surat induced some of them to settle in Bombay for purposes of trade. This much may, however, be safely affirmed, that their first settlement in that island was a little before the time when it was ceded to the British by the Crown of Portugal, as the dowry of Catherine, Princess of that country, who became the wife of Charles the Second of England, A.D. 1668.

Dr. Fryer, who visited Bombay in the year 1671, says: “On the other side of the great inlet to the sea is a great point abutting against Old Woman’s Island, and is called Malabar Hill, a rocky woody mountain, yet sends forth long grass; on the top of all 1s a Parsi tomb lately raised.”’ The first work of the Parsis wherever they settle is to construct a tower of silence or what Dr. Fryer calls a tomb for the reception of their dead, and his statement that the tomb

1 This “dokhma” still exists on Malabar Hill. It was built by one Hirji Watcha, an ancestor of the Watcha Ghandhi family of the present day.