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

CHAP. V.] FEMALE ESCORTS. 231

notice that Parsi women were in the habit of leaving their houses after sunset to fetch water or to go to market, and also that they attended pleasure parties without the protection of male companions or seryants. The Panchayet held this conduct to be discreditable to the good name of the Parsi community and especially of the female portion. A proclamation was therefore issued to the effect that no woman was to go out of her house alone on any pretence whatever before sunrise or after sunset, and that if any woman was unavoidably detained at the house of a friend or relative she should not return “without a servant and a lighted lantern, and if any woman was found walking on the road unaccompanied as above, she would be seized by ‘nasesalars’ (corpse-bearers) or persons employed for that purpose, and publicly disgraced and confined in the ‘ nasakhana.’ ”*

This edict proved so effectual that for some time after it was proclaimed a Parsi woman was scarcely ever to be seen in the streets of Bombay before sunrise or after sunset, because the Panchayet, true to its threat, did actually punish such offenders as were detected by placing them in their so-called prison the ‘“nasakhana.” It must be admitted that these were high-handed proceedings, and we can only account for the passive submission to them by remembering that the authority of the Panchayet in those days was

1 A place where the funeral biers are kept.