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

8 HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [CHAP. I.

He also shared in the secret negotiation in 1802 between Raoji Apaji Anandrao Gaikwar and the Bombay Government, which resulted m the extrication of the Gaikwar from the domination of the Arabs, who formed a mercenary force that had acquired such great influence and power in the state that when its pay fell into arrears it seized the city of Baroda and kept Anandrao Gaikwar confined in his own palace as a prisoner. This service rendered against his own army naturally caused the extension of the influence and the increase of the control possessed by the British in the affairs of the Baroda state. For these services the ‘‘ desal” was granted in 1817 by the Court of Directors a pension of two hundred rupees a month for three lives. At the present day the family of the “desai,” which consists of about a hundred souls, are nothing more than landholders. Socially they occupy a high position in the Zoroastrian community of Navsari.

It was at Surat, however, that the Parsis laid the foundation of their real prosperity. Though the Parsis, in leaving Persia, had fled from Mussulman tyranny, it could not be said that m India, which then became their home, they were regarded with the same hatred by the Indian Mussulmans as they had been by those in their own country. By their pleasing manners and affable disposition, as well as by

their industrious habits and their character for