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

INTRODUCTION. xxvii

difficulties. Not merely is there doubt as to the necessity of educating women at all, but early marriage and the jealously- guarded right of female seclusion have placed bars in the way of instruction which can only be gradually removed. It is something to be able to say that the Parsis—thanks, of course, to the absence. of caste distinctions and prejudices—have been able to break through these fetters to a greater extent than any other Indian race; and while female education is becoming an accomplished fact instead of a mere phrase, it was only natural that a great reform should have been simultaneously carried out for the abolition of marriages between children. At the present time Parsi ladies are beginning to make that educational progress in which our men have reached an advanced stage. One of the most practical benefits that will thus be conferred on our community, in addition to the introduction into the domestic circle of a higher influence through female knowledge, will be the gradual creation of a band of lady doctors, who will be able to minister to sufferers of the same sex not merely among their own race but also among the Hindus and Mahomedans, who have a reluctance to admit a man even on an errand of mercy and succour into their female quarters.

But perhaps of all the subjects into which the condition of a community may be divided, that which will probably attract most attention in con-