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

CHAP. I.] BURKE'S LETTER. 43

We may bring our consideration of the distinguished Parsi families of Gujarat to a conclusion with a short account of a Parsi family which greatly distinguished itself at Daman, a small town still

in the possession of the Portuguese Government.

transact with the East India Directors and British Government. They were found by Mr. Burke under very unpleasant circumstances, occasioned by their peculiar modes of life, and the obligations of their religion ; with the attention to strangers for which Mr. Burke was so remarkable, he took them down to Beaconsfield, and it being summer, gave them up a large green-house for their separate use where they prepared their food according to the rules of their caste, performed their ablutions, and discharged such other duties as rites of their religion and their customs required, and as circumstances permitted. They found great pleasure in Mr. and Mrs. Burke’s society and where they were visited by many distinguished people whilst they sojourned at Beaconsfield. In autumn they set out on their return to India, and on their arrival there, Ragunath Rao wrote to thank Mr. Burke for his kindness to his agents. The fragment of Burke’s reply, which is here given, was written probably at the end of the year 1782.”

Mr. Burke’s reply to Ragunath Rao’s letter of thanks was as follows :—

“You may set too much value on the few and slight services, that I have been able to perform for your agent Hanumant Rao, and his assistant Maniar Parsi. It was nothing more than a duty one man owed to another. Hanumant Rao has done me the honour of being my guest for a very short time, and I endeavoured to make my place, as convenient as any of us are able to do, for a person so strictly observant as he was of all the rules and ceremonies of the religion, to which he was born, and to which he strictly conformed, often at the manifest hazard of his life. To this I have been witness. We have, however, Sir, derived one benefit from the instruction he has given us, relative to your ways of living ; that whenever it shall be thought necessary to send gentoos of a high caste to transact any business in this kingdom, on giving proper notice, and on obtaining proper licence from authority for their coming, we shall be enabled to provide for them in such a manner as greatly to lessen the difficulties in our intercourse,