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personal attractions, mental and phys-longer minds her spinning-wheel as in ical, and the amount of dowry which Iranian days), and Parsee ladies are her father is prepared to give with her. always peculiarly gentle and home-lovThis last is purely supplemental, and ing, showing to best advantage in their arrives at its largest figure when ugli- families. Poems sing the praises of ness and brainlessness predominate. the warlike Gurdafrid, firm in saddle Nor is character omitted in the compu- and practised in the fight, who vantation a bad temper is equated in the quished Sorab, the son of Rustum, sound coin of her Majesty's empire. whom no man could withstand (FirIf beautiful or otherwise attractive, her dusi). Perhaps beside her Parsee ladies father feels justified in concluding that are too little active; at any rate one his daughter needs no bush. Choice is longs for something-poverty perhaps, pain; he will not dazzle the young aspi- or the devotion to some idea, however raut by too many attractions, although exaggerated, which will rouse us out of when the suitor has appeared the our lethargy to prove ourselves worthy father is not loth to dower heavily. of our origin - emancipators of Indian A Zoroastrian is by no means a miser; women, builders of an Indian literature, he loves to do handsomely that to reformers of Indian abuses - what which he sets his hand. The dastur, not? We are so placed as to invite omniscient being, possesses an equally action; united and small, our lives significant list of marriageable young must touch each other's; the treasures men, with a forecast as to their pros- of the university are at our feet; India, pects in their profession or other- with its beautiful sunsets, its luxuwise; these lists, as will be imagined, riant hills, its wild wastes, its demonmake excellent literature for the re- haunted caverns, its ancient literature, spective parents. They are Iranian its differing peoples and minds, is at enough, however, to let the persons hand to supply our imaginations; concerned manage for themselves the real business of the wooing. The parents content themselves with making opportunities, and directing the tastes of the younger generation, and compulsion is rarely necessary, whether because the child is docile who knows?

beauty, in God's work and in man's work, is around us; the result of various civilizations is with us to influence us; looking on lovely things with a trained and understanding eye, our minds ought to grow beautiful. We might fulfil that for which the prophet said Zoroastrians were born to add to One cannot regret any system which the sum of goodness in the world, and retains authority in an age when lib-diminish the power of Ahreman, the erty, whether much or little, is likely to Evil Spirit. prove baneful; still I must confess to Perhaps one mistake made in the being intensely amused at the marriage education of a Parsee girl is that the lists I have seen, and the arithmetical religious and emotional side of her exactitude of the equations. One won- nature is not sufficiently developed. ders, too, why "accomplished" should Women have for long left the praying take so much off a dower when it to the men. Some effort has of late means what it does mean in India, been made to bring back the ancient for most Parsee girls, alas! - a little times, when men and women had equal music, bad enough to be painful, a religious duties. Compare Zoroaster's little painting, an acquaintance with prayer to Ahura Mazda, "that the virEnglish and French. This last is often tuous and noble Hataosa, the wife of put to no further use than the reading King Vishtaspa, may exert herself to of lachrymose novels, for there is no help in propagating among her sex the one in a Parsee household who will moral and spiritual culture of which he trouble to suggest better. The domes- was the great pioneer and founder tic part of the girl's education is not (Yt. ix. 25, xvii. 46). So Professor neglected, certainly (though she no Darmesteter says: "The moral vic

tory of Zoroastrianism is the work of a woman, and no picture of women is nobler and higher than that drawn in the Avesta. She helped her husband to suppress evil and propitiate the gods; she was trained in all truth, righteousness, and justice, and after this life was found worthy to be invoked among the saints.

"May

the walk round the sacred fire, indicative of a desire to make religion the centre of their joint lives, with all that fire symbolizes of purity and holiness and light. The liturgy is interesting - Ahura Mazda is invoked for happiness. Then follows the curious and quaintly detailed marriage blessing, compassing many sides of life. A fool Of Zoroastrianism itself much has is evidently not easily suffered. been said and written; we all know you be brilliant;" exhortations to virthat the sun and fire and light are to a tue and piety succeed this, with excelZoroastrian only the greatest exhibition lent maxims for daily life: "Do of the power of a deity. Pure Zoroas-nothing without mature consideratrianism is simply a beautiful form of tion;" "Avoid being angry;" "Be Theism. The Fire Temple, with its courteous, sweet-tongued, and kind ;” priest forever feeding the sacred flame, "Do not indulge in scandal;" "Do the incense of the people's prayers not quarrel with the revengeful ;” continually ascending to God, has no and, what certainly does credit to the touch of heathenism, or of anything appreciation of knowledge, "Do not but what is refined and beautiful. All co-operate with the ill - informed.” that is wanted now is what Mr. Arnold" Speak in an assembly after mature calls Hebraism or Judaism; we have consideration" may be enjoined on ocenough of Hellenism and to spare. casions other than a marriage. Also, The unity of Zoroastrianism is notice-"In no way annoy your mother." able. The people did indeed divide Then are invoked the thirty angels for into Kudmis and Shehenshais, but the their respective virtues, and final blessdifference was only as to the date of ings that thoughts, words, and actions the last Persian king. It does not ex- may be good dismiss the patient couple. ist in Persia, and even among Indian The funeral rites are peculiar to PerZoroastrians is of no practical impor-sia. The Parsees will not burn or bury tance whatever. The sects intermarry, their dead, because they consider a and are on the friendliest terms, retaining the distinction merely so as not to embarrass old records.

dead body impure, and they will notsuffer themselves to defile any of the elements. They therefore expose their To view religion now in its concrete corpses to vultures, a method revolting aspect and in its relation to the life of a perhaps to the imagination, but one Parsee. At a child's birth the protect- which commends itself to all those who ing angels are invoked, prayers are are acquainted therewith. And, after offered in the Fire Temples, the astrol-all, one sees nothing but the quiet, oger is consulted, the child's name sug-white-robed procession (white is mourngested (for the goddess of Fate does ing among the Parsees) following the not write visibly on the blank paper bier to the Tower of Silence. At the laid ready for its use beside the bed of entrance they look their last on the the young infaut). Then comes the dead, and the corpse-bearers -a caste time for his admission to the privileges of such carry it within the precincts, of his race; the investiture with the and lay it down, to be finally disposed sudra and kusti, already explained. of by the vultures which crowd the The next occasion for a ceremony is a tower. And why should the swoop of marriage — full, as all Eastern cere- a flock of white birds be more revoltmonies, of symbolism. It is worth ing than what happens in a grave? noticing that the marriage knot is a sevenfold cord. seven being a sacred number among the Parsees; the concluding ceremony is also peculiar

Meanwhile, and for three days after, the priests say constant prayers for the departed, for his soul is supposed not to leave the world till the fourth

day after death. On the fourth day of a governing body, the Parsees sothere is the Uthanna ceremony, when licited government aid, and after much large sums of money are given away inquiry and discussion two acts were in memory of the departed. The lit-passed-the Parsee Succession Act and urgy in use is a series of funeral ser- the Parsee Marriage and Divorce Act, mons by Zoroaster. 1865. Moreover, the Parsee Matrimonial Courts have taken the place of the old Panchayet in the matters they consider, and of the constitution and procedure of this court the curious will find ample explanation in the report of Sir J. Arnold's commission.

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Of superstitions, the Parsees have had more than they retain. Connected with burial is the popular conception as to the efficacy of a dog's gaze after death. Dogs are sacred, and supposed to guide the souls of the dead to heaven, and to ward off evil spirits; hence it is It remains to add something by way customary to lead a dog into the cham- of apology. I have been hampered by ber of death, that he may look at the the thought that much that I can say corpse before it is carried to the Tower. must be common knowledge. MoreOriental scholars will miss the prom- over, I have tried to avoid what could inence of Parsee legislation. We have be found in books. All that was posno Manu and no Koran. The codes sible was to glance at the Parsees as prepared by the Prophet seem to have they appear in their daily life in India. been lost in early ages. Custom has We find an anomalous little body of guided therefore, and the Panchayet people, with a history and a philosophy, had the final decision in disputes. The planted in a small corner of western first Panchayet was a self-constituted India — themselves in a way both Westcouncil of the influential members of ern and Eastern-and thus forming a the community. It was the court of bridge between the continents. Westjustice in all causes, aud any refusal to ern in progressive thought, in educaabide by its decrees was punished by tion, and in social customs; Eastern in excommunication, and, what would location, in birth, in imagination, and have delighted Bentham, public beat- religion, and working in what was a ing with shoes. About the eighteenth foreign country in the most perfect century the Panchayet received govern- harmony with the people and their ment recognition, but it was recon- rulers. Always loyal to her Majesty's structed in 1787, in consequence of Empire, they may be said to be inquarrels and the oppression of the members. In its new form it consisted of six priests and six laymen, and it worked well. It passed regulations about such matters as the manner of mourning; e.g., they were not to cry in assemblies, or beat their breasts, or indulge in any excessive grief. So with sumptuary regulations as to feasts and fasts. Such a body depended for its efficiency entirely on the strength And now the tale is told. We have of the members composing it. As seen the Parsee as he stands before the soon as the older ones died out, and priest in that early, solemn moment of weaker men came to rule, the Pancha- his life when he is named by the name yet ceased to have any effect. Persons of his Prophet; we have met him were respected in the distribution of in public and private life; we have punishment, and many wicked flour- watched as his hands were bound with ished unmolested. As a result it ceased that sevenfold cord; then, when the to exist in 1836, and has since then been last rites came to be performed, we no more thau trustee for the charitable listened to the chanting of the funeral funds of the community. Thus bereft dirge, and saw the white-robed proces

terpreters to the East of the Western spirit, while the most cordial relations exist between them and the other races in India. Their religion has found many expounders and defenders; all must acknowledge its beauty, its freedom from superstition, its high moral ideals, its charming symbolism. In education and social customs we find them almost European.

sion winding to the Silent Tower; and, as they lift him gently to where his foot has never trod, let us turn aside to the hearth and the sandal-wood, that to Ahura Mazda may ascend from us the prayer that the three days may not yet have elapsed, but that even now the spirit of that dead Persia, which

once reached so far westward, may rise
to inspire her representatives in India
with desire and strength, that we may
effect our true destiny handed down to
us by the Prophet, through the ages
even to widen the skirts of light, and
make the struggle with darkness nar-
rower.
CORNELIA SORABJI.

AN important Bulletin on the forest and mineral wealth of Brazil has lately been issued by the Bureau of the American Republics. The forests of Brazil abound in woods of great value, some of the finest of which are said to be entirely unknown in Europe. With regard to mineral resources, Brazil is not less fortunate. Scientific explorers have found great deposits of coal and iron, and have also proved that the country possesses copper, manganese, and argentiferous lead ore. There are also mines of gold and diamonds. Diamonds are co-extensive with the gold deposits, and, like that metal, are most abundant in Minas Geraes, where they have been found since 1789. The most important locality known for the production of these gems is the district of Diamantina, in the abovenamed state. They are found in Parana, in the gravels of the river Tibagy, and in the bed of streams dry during the summer. Since the discovery of diamonds at the Cape of Good Hope, the Brazilian production has greatly diminished. As regards iron, the State of Minas Geraes abounds with it. It is not found in veins or strata, buried deep in the earth, but in enormous beds, often lying at the surface, or in mountain masses. These vast deposits are worked only by small scattered furnaces, charcoal being used in the reduction of the

about seven hundred and ninety tons of pig-iron. The ore has about sixty-seven per cent. of iron. In Santa Caterina, not far from a harbor accessible to the largest vessels, are vast deposits of hæmatite, containing, on an average, thirty per cent. of manganese, and twenty to thirty per cent. of iron. In the State of Goyaz, as in Minas Geraes, are found enormous masses of the ore itaberite. Nature.

RACE DEGENERACY. - The "degeneracy of the race" is a favorite topic of the "silly season." Opinions are divided. The youth and smallness of the modern British soldier are used as arguments in favor of degeneracy, whilst athletic records and the increased stature of women are urged as proof of our improvement in physique. Probably the vigor of the upper and middle classes is increasing, that of the working classes being stationary, whilst a fringe is deteriorating, owing to the modern crowding of the agricultural population to the towns. From this fraction of the population, apparently, a considerable percentage of our recruits are drawn. Any one who saw the tennis tournament in Devonshire Park, Eastbourne, must have been struck by the extraordinary proficiency of the women. Take them out of the skirts Of these small furnaces there are five which handicap them, and ladies like Mrs. groups, producing about three thousand Hillyard and Miss Shackles would want tons annually, the product being used in few points from the best men. As it is, the surrounding districts in the manufac- they play half-volleys with equal skill. ture of articles of home consumption, such There is no evidence of degeneracy in lawn as hoes, shovels, picks, drills, nails, horse- tennis, at all events. One wonders with shoes, etc. In the State of San Paulo are what eyes our great-grandmothers would found deposits similar to the best Norwe- behold the cat-like activity of their degian ore; and one of the mines is worked scendants in the tennis courts! Tennis, at by the government establishment near the all events, should send forward some excelvillage of Sorocaba. This establishment lent atavistic propensities into the future. has two furnaces, and produced in one year

ore.

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