ration of souls_.
18. _Clothes, food and ceremonial observances_.

1. Introductory.

The number of Parsis in the Central Provinces in 1911 was about
1800. They are immigrants from Bombay, and usually reside in large
towns, where they are engaged in different branches of trade,
especially in the manufacture and vend of liquor and the management
of cotton mills and factories. [347] The word Parsi means a resident
of the province of Fars or Pars in Persia, from which the name of
the country is also derived.

2. The Zoroastrian religion.

Also known as Mazdaism, the Zoroastrian religion was that of
the ancient Magi or fire-worshippers of Persia, mentioned in
Scripture. It is supposed that Zoroaster or Spitama Zarathustra,
if he was a historical personage, effected a reformation of this
religion and placed it on a new basis at some time about 1100 B.C. It
is suggested by Haug [348] that Zarathustra was the designation of
the high priests of the cult, and Spitama the proper name of that
high priest who carried out its distinctive reformation, and perhaps
separated the religion of the Persian from the Indian Aryans. This
would account for the fact that the sacred writings, which, according
to the testimony of Greek and Roman authors, were of great extent,
their compilation probably extending over several centuries, were
subsequently all ascribed to one man, or to Zarathustra alone. The
Zend-Avesta or sacred book of the Parsis does not mention the fire
priests under the name of Magi, but calls them Athravan, the same
word as the Sanskrit Atharva-Veda. The reason for this, M. Reinach
suggests, is that the Magi had rebelled against Cambyses, the son of
Cyrus, in the sixth century B.C., during his absence in Egypt, and
placed a rival creature of their own on the throne. Darius, the son
of Hystaspes, overthrew him and re-established the Persian kingdom
in 523 B.C., and this may have discredited the Magian priests and
caused those of the reformed religion to adopt a new name. [349]
It is certain that Cyrus conformed to the precept of the Avesta
against the pollution of the sacred element water, when he diverted
the course of the river Gyndanes in order to recover the body of a
horse which had been drowned in it, and that Darius I. invokes in his
inscriptions Ormazd or Ahura Mazda, the deity of the Avesta. [350]
On the subversion of the Persian empire by Alexander, and the
subsequent conquest of Persia by the Ar