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

CHAP. V.] TWO IMPORTANT ACTS. 257

it needless to reproduce here the various reasons adduced by the Commission on the strength of the evidence, written, oral, and traditional, given by the witnesses examined before it. It will be sufficient for us to state the several heads of inquiry to which the Commission directed its attention, and to record briefly the conclusions to which it came and which led that body to recommend to the Legislature the passing of the Parsi Succession Act (No. 10 of 1865) and the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act (No. 15 of 1865). The first point which presented itself to the Commission for consideration was :—

What, if any, are the usages recognised as law by the Parsis of India as to the right of females to inherit from intestate male Parsis !

On this question, after full inquiry, the Commission came to the same conclusion as that arrived at by Mr. Borradaile in the year 1825, viz. that the Parsis had no law, for such books as they had before they emierated from Persia were at that time all lost, and the rules which, by their engagement with the Hindu chief of Sanjan, they bound themselves to obey formed, together with the custom of the country which they insensibly adopted in their intercourse with the people, a body of rules or common law differmg in few respects from that custom of the country founded on Hindu law which regulates the whole of a Hindw’s life.

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