What, however, is most extraordinary is that of all the communities in Bombay the Parsis show the greatest susceptibility to these beliefs. Amongst the Hindus worship of water is, no doubt, universal. Belief in spirits is also general amongst them. Amongst these spirits there are water-goblins also, _Jalachar_, as contrasted with _Bhuchar_, spirits hovering on earth, mostly inimical, _mâtâs_ and _sankhinis_, _bhuts_, and _prets_ who hover round wells and tanks, particularly the wayside ones, and drown or enter the persons of those who go near their haunts. Many of these goblins are the spirits of those who have met with an accidental death or the souls that have not received the funeral _pindas_ with the proper obsequies. The Hindus believe that these fallen souls reside in their _avagati_, or degraded condition, near the scene of their death and molest those who approach it. Almost all the old wells in the Maidan were in this way believed to be the haunts of such spirits who claimed their annual toll without fail. Thus it was believed that the well that stood in the rear of the Bombay Gymkhana must needs have at least three victims, and sure enough there were at least three cases of suicide in that well during a year! However, so far as domestic well-spirits are concerned, while almost all the wells of a Parsi house were until recently and many of them still are under the protection of a _Bâwâ_, or _Sayyid_, or _Pir_, or _Jinn_, or _Pari_, or other spirits, one rarely comes across such wells in Hindu household. Wells are worshipped by the Hindus no doubt, without exception, but it is the sacred character of the water that accounts for the worship, not the belief in the existence of well-spirits. Again, as a result of my investigations, I find that the worship of wells amongst the Parsi community is in some cases much ruder and more primitive than amongst the Hindus. What can be the explanation for it? Is it simply a continuation of their own old beliefs in the land of their adoption? Is it merely old wine in new bottles? Water-worship was, no doubt, a general cult with the Parsis in their ancestral home. Of the antiquity of this worship amongst them we have ample evidence in their scriptures. In the _Aban Yesht_ the spring is addressed as a mighty goddess, _Ardevi Sura Anahita_, strong, sublime, spotless, erroneously equated by some authors with the Mylitta of the Babylonians and the Aphrodite of the Greeks. Ahurarmazda calls upon Zarathushtra to worship _Ardevi Sura Anahita_:— The wide-expanding, the healing, Foe to the demons, of Ahura’s Faith, Worthy of sacrifice in the material world, Worthy of prayer in the material world, Life-increasing, the righteous, Herd-increasing, the righteous, Food-increasing, the righteous, Wealth-increasing, the righteous, Country-increasing, the righteous.