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

172 HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [CHAP. Iv.

ages show that the majority of them were between the ages of fifteen and twenty years, although there are still instances of infant marriages. It was only three years ago that a well-to-do but elderly Parsi priest, who was blessed with several children and grandchildren, desired to complete his happiness, as he thought, by seeing them all married. A day was accordingly fixed for this great event, much to the amusement of the guests, of whom only a very few could have approved of child marriages. The Parsi newspapers raised a cry of indignation when they heard about it, and public condemnation was so unmistakably expressed on this occasion that such marriages are not likely to recur. The feeling of shame which, in common with the Hindus, the Parsis long felt at any failure to marry their children in infancy, has almost disappeared, and it may with some confidence be asserted that ten or twenty years hence early marriages will be among them a thing of the past.

It must, however, be recorded that from the earliest times of the Parsi arrival in India there had not been wanting sensible men who always disapproved of the custom. Among the Zoroastrians-in Persia a boy is not married before the age of twenty, nor a girl before the age of fifteen, a practice which must have died out amongst the Indian Zoroastrians through their coming into contact with the Hindus. After the Parsis came to