2-982-156 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Bombay Parsees with an Address of Welcome to the Prince [of Wales], 1876. The future King Edward VII on a royal visit to India. 'The Parsees constitute the wealthiest and most influential part of the native population, not only in Bombay, but in other towns of Western India. They formerly occupied Surat and the adjacent districts of Guzerat, whither they had come from Persia, or rather from Media and Bactria, and the provinces on the Oxus, north of Afghanistan, after the Mussulman conquest of those provinces. They still cherish the religious faith of the Zend-Avesta, that of the Magi, or priesthood founded by Zoroaster 500 or 600 years before Christ. It is a system of lofty and ascetic morality, connected with a theistic belief not at all irrational, and with a ritual in which fire, that of the sun more especially, is revered as the symbol of the Deity'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.