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

CHAP. Iv.]| THE PATERFAMILIAS. 189

isation, and thus the marriage ceremonials have been invested with an infinitely more sober and more rational air.

As the couple are invariably young, separate accommodation is seldom allotted them after their marriage, nor even when they have attained adult age do they leave the parental roof. They live in the same house with the other members of the family. Though a father has six or seven sons they all reside with their wives and children in the house of their sire, and the gray-headed old man is often able to look with pride and pleasure upon the group of children and grandchildren around him, Europeans in Bombay have often seen wealthy Parsis driving in their spacious open carriages of an evening with half a dozen little ones beside them, and others following. There are, of course, instances where sons have left their father’s roof and taken separate houses for themselves and their families, and of brothers who, after the death of their parents, have separated from each other. ‘This, however, is not owme to the same ideas which prompt Europeans to live apart after marriage. Domestic quarrels among the wives of brothers, or with the mother-in-law, are generally the cause of separation in these exceptional cases.

It may, perhaps, not be out of place if we now describe the marriage ceremony as it is performed by the Zoroastrians in Persia. It is much simpler than