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

CHAP, V.] A CHANGE OF CREED. 269

have made of recent years in discountenancing the objectionable practice of infant marriages, a custom equally opposed to the principles of those who were invited to legislate and to the true interests of those on whose behalf legislation was solicited.

The next question on which the European members differed from the Parsis on this Commission—as was very natural—was, Whether the Indian Legislature could rightly be asked to recognise difference of religious belief existing before and at the time of marriage as a valid ground for rendering a Parsi marriage 7pso facto void, or to recognise difference of religious belief arising after marriage as a just reason for making a Parsi marriage voidable ?

The European members of the Commission said that they could not ‘recommend that either of these provisions should be adopted by the Indian Legislature. As long as the religious feelings of the Parsis retained their present force, neither provision, if adopted, would be very likely to be called into operation: the preventive check supplied by such religious feelings may safely be trusted to this extent. But it would be a retrograde step in legislation to make the violation of such feelings the basis per se of an absolute avoidance or dissolution of the marriage contract. The restriction proposed in Section XIT. appears peculiarly odious. In cases where religious sentiment has not availed

to prevent a Parsi male or female from contracting