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

308 HISTORY OF THE PARSTS. [CHAP. VI,

up, as Mr. Bethune did their fellow-labourers in Calcutta, but it was perhaps all the better that it was so. Official support might have contributed a bright light at the beginning, dazzled many, and attracted the people by the novelty; but with all these aids female education would have remained an exotic plant. There would have been wanting the stability and strength against accidents which are so conspicuous in an indigenous system. Tt was said that the movement initiated by the Students’ Society in the cause of female education was scarcely likely to succeed, as it was not assisted by the prestige of rank and of political and social influence, as was the case in Bengal under Mr. Bethune. That prestige of this description is very powerful in India and everywhere else nobody can dispute, but in a matter like the establishment of a matter in which the sensitive pre-

female schools judices of the people had to be encountered—it was considered far wiser to let the project originate with and be carried out by the people themselves, and the result showed the wisdom of that course of proceeding. As soon as Mr, Bethune left Calcutta the cause of female education in Bengal collapsed, while the girls’ schools established in Bombay by the Students’ Society for both Parsis and Hindus prospered, The two races so long connected in India

combined on this subject, and simultaneously with