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

282 HISTORY OF THE PARSTS. [CHAP. VI.

the year 1820 the Bombay Native Education Society was established for the education of native youth under the patronage and auspices of the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, at that time Governor of Bombay, who will be always remembered among the most enlightened of English statesmen in the East. No sooner had he assumed the reins of power than he perceived with the true instinct of a statesman that education was the safest and most efficient way of improving the native mind, that the advancement of the moral and intellectual condition of the people of India would best insure the true prosperity of their country by enabling them to understand and appreciate the character of the rule under which they lived. Looking still further ahead, he may have foreseen a time when, by realising the aim of a beneficent government, the natives would be qualified to participate in the administration of their own country. With Mountstuart Elphinstone’s tenure of office the era of enlightened rule in the Western Presidency of India may be said to have commenced. Tt was by his noble and zealous efforts that ignorance yielded some of its unfruitful possessions to knowledge, if it could not be banished altogether. Then in a little time the languages, literature, science, and philosophy of Europe began to be unfolded before the eyes of an intelligent people too long confined in the outer darkness. The seeds thus sown for the