ent of Variav seems to have been as old as that of Cambay. A
Pehlvi inscription on the sides of the Kanheri caves, tells us that
a certain number of Parsis visited them on the 2nd of December, 999,
and according to another similar Pehlvi inscription, other Parsis
seem to have visited them on the 5th of November, 1021. [23]

We then find the Parsis at Naosari [24]; in 1142 a Mobed named
Camdin Yartosht quitted Sanjan with his family, to perform there some
religious ceremonies required by the Zoroastrians of that place. If
we follow the authority of a certain manuscript preserved by the
descendants of Meherji Rana, the celebrated High Priest who lived
three centuries ago, it was from the Parsis that Naosari received its
name. When they arrived there--511, Yezdezard--they found the climate
as pleasant as that of Mazanderan, one of the provinces of Persia,
and called it Navisari or Nao-Sari. Since then it has been called
Naosari-Nagmandal instead of Nagmandal, its old name. [25]

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 A