RELIGIOUS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 741, 14 May 1886, Page 6

RELIGIOUS.

THE FAITH OF IRAN. Of a sum total of less than 100,000 Zoroastrian worshippers, thinly scattered over various parts of the world, about one-half, or 48,397, were shown by the census of 1881 to reside in Bombay. These are said, not without truth, to form the “ salt of the community.” These numbers very inadequately represent the influence which they have consistently exerted on the side of civilisation. They are foremost in promoting education ; their charity is unbounded and cosmopolitan; they have led the way towards female enfranchisement ; they set a bright example of loyalty to the British Crown, and of zeal for all European improvements. The actual prpsperity of Bombay is largely due to Parsi enterprise. Until forty years ago the whole trade of the port passed through their hands. They fouuded banks and companies; they floated costly undertakings. A Parsi capitalist established, in 1854, the first steam cotton mill in the “ Manchester of the East.’’ Parsis were among the first and most successful railway contractors in India ; shipbuilding originated iu Bombay with a Parsi of Surat, the founder of the Wad'a family ; Bombay-built ships owed their reputation entirely to Parsi constructive ingenuity and skilful workmanship. Above all, the commercial morality of this people has always maintained it 3 high standard. The Parsi millionaires of a generation or two ago, among whom Sir Jamshedji Jijibhai was foremost, though far from isolated, derived the bulk of the[r fortunes from trade with China. Of the new opportunities, however, offered by the Treaty of Nankin in 1542, and by the introduction of steam navigation, Jewish firms both at Bombay and Calcutta were quick to take advantage ; and the profits of opium selling now mainly flow into their coffers. Parsi merchants, too, suffered severely through the “ share mania ’ ensuing upon the American Civil War, so that the fortunes amassed and dispersed by them are no longer on the colossal scale of former days. But pari passu with the decline in their prosperity has come a widening in their range of effort. Shaking themselves free from a too exclusive devotiou to commerce, they seek distinction in the learned professions and in the service of the State ; while agriculture, recommended to them by the strongest religious sanctions, is beginning to attract their capital and energy. And what they do, they do in no grudging spirit, and usually with no partial success. For a thousand years back the Parsis have used Gujerati, the vernacular of Western India, as their mother tongue. English is, besides, taught in all their schools ; but so much as a smattering of Persian belongs only to the erudite few. The mass of the community repeat customary prayers ; a tongue become strange by ages of desuetude, and with no conception of their purport. The recovery of the Zend or Avestan language is an achievement of European philology. Some hold on the meaning of the sacred texts had indeed, been retained through the Pahlavi version of them ; but Zend scholarship had no existence until Eugene Burnouf, in 18S3, prepared a scientific foundation for it in his “ Commentaire sur le Yagna.” What we possess of Avestan literature is but as salvage from a wreck. One book out of the tradiditional twenty-one is extant entire. This is the “ Vendiddd,” a code of purification and morals of primary importance. The remainder is made up of liturgical pieces, constantly recited, either by the faithful privately, or by the priests in the course of worship. The “ Avesta ” transmitted to us thus professes to be, as M. Darmesteter remarks, not a bible but a prayer-book. The lead of Europe in the study of these antique documents has been eagerly followed in India. The “Vendid&d,” with some later religious writings has been translated by learned Parsis into Gujerati; Avestan scholarship is actively encouraged, the fullest investigation and an enlightened interpretation of texts are countenanced. With the Parsi creed, as expounded by Mr Dosabhai Framji, it is probable that Zoroaster himself, could he rise from his sleep of 3000 years, would find himself iu substantial agreement. It is a pure monotheism. The polytheistic excrescences of the ‘ Avesta ’ have lost vitality and dropped off through contact with Judaism, Christianity, and

Mahomedanism ; its s latent pantheism has remained in comparative abeyance ; its dualism has returned to its original position as a defective philosophy of evil. Of fireworship in an idolatrous sense the Parsis are altogether innocent. The accusation is a calumny, which can only be repeated through wilful malice or culpable ignorance. Zoroaster adopted the old Aryan fire-cult, making that beneficent element and chief instrument of civilisation not an object, but a centre of fire-worship. The Parsis do likewise. The purified flame burning in their temples is to them a symbol of the Divinity, and an aid to the lifting up of thought. It is, indeed, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, something more. There is a strong savor of antique naturalism in their reverence so called ‘elements.’ But this is a survival of primeval ways of thinking, rather than a part of their religion. The distinctive practices of Parsis are, with one striking exception, negative or unobtrusive. They never smoke ; they will not voluntarily extinguish fire ; the use of public baths is abhorrent to them. They esteem it a sin to speak while eating, to touch the ground wth bare feet, to pallue fire or water. The wearing of the kusti, or sacred girdle," is the special badge of the Zoroastrianfaith’. It is a woollen cord, woven of seventy-two threads, typical of the seventy two chapters of the ‘ Yasna,’ passed three times round the waist to recall the triple moral obligation as to thoughts, words, and deeds, and fastened with four knots, one in honor of each of the elements. A short form of prayer accompanies its removal and replacement, and the ceremony of investiture with it, performed equally for boys and girls at the age of seven, is held to imply irrevocable consecration to the Zoroastrian profession. Its correspondence with the ‘ sacred thread ’ of the Brahmans vindicates for it an immemorial antiquity.