From the narrations of different travellers it would seem that the
Parsis had settled in a great many cities of Upper India; but it
is impossible to say whether these came from Western India or from
Persia. A Mahomedan traveller of the tenth century, Al Isthakhri,
mentions several parts of India as being occupied by the Guebres:
that is the name given by Mahomedan writers to the Parsis. An
unexceptionable testimony of their presence at Dehra-Dun (1079)
is furnished to us in the attack of Ibrahim the Ghaznevid against a
colony of fire-worshippers living in that place. Similarly we find the
Parsis in the Panjaub before 1178, if we are to believe the tradition
of a voyage made that year by a Parsi priest named Mahyar; he had
come from Uch, a town situated on the conflux of the five rivers of
the Panjaub, to Seistan in Persia, in order to acquire a thorough
knowledge of the religious rites. After six years of study under
the Dastoors he brought into India, in 1184, a copy of the Pehlvi
translation of the Vendidad. [26] It seems also that there must have
been some intercourse between the Parsis of Cambay and those of the
Panjaub, since, in 1328, the former were in possession of some copies
of the Vendidad acquired by Mahyar.
At the time of the invasion of India by Timur, we find Parsis or Magi
amongst the captives. The men who have been represented as believing
in the two principles of good and evil, and admitting at the same
time Yazdan (God) and Ahreman (the Devil), and who offered a desperate
resistance to Timur at Tughlikhpur, were the Parsis. It is said besides
that the colony at Gujerat was reinforced by a large number of Parsis,
who fled before the conqueror. The mention made by a Mahomedan writer
of the destruction of fire-temples by the Emperor Sikandar (1504),
shows that long before this date Parsi emigrants had dwelt in Upper
India. Sir H. M. Elliot, in his History of India, following the
opinion of Professor Dawson, affirms that the Guebres of Rohilkhand,
the Magyas of Malwa, and the Maghs of Tughlikhpur, although at present
they offer no religious peculiarities, are the remnants of the Parsis
of Upper India. According to a communication anent Mount Abu by Sir
Alexander Burnes, cited in the Gazetteer of Bombay, there had been a
Parsi colony at Chandrauli towards the middle of the fifteenth century.
It is believed that the Parsis settled at Ankleswar in the middle
of the thirteenth century of our era. One of their religious books,
the Vispered, was in fact copied there in 1258. There is no doubt of
their having been at Bharooch [27] before the commencement of the
fourteenth century, for we find that a "Dokhma" was built there in
1309 by a Parsi named Pestanji; and the ruins of a still older Tower
are to be found in the suburb of Vajalpoor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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