hreman (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.

The settlements at Thana and Chaul must have been founded at an early
date; Mahomedan and European travellers mention them in speaking of
these two places, without giving them their true name. However, the
description given of them agrees very much with that of the Parsis; and
this idea is confirmed by Odoric, an Italian monk who was travelling
in India about the beginning of the fourteenth century. [28] The people
(at Thana) were, according to him, idolaters, for they worshipped fire,
serpents, and trees, and did not bury their dead, but carried them
with great pomp to the fields, and cast them down as food for beasts
and birds. Now, as the Hindoos either burn or bury their dead, the
custom here described relates evidently to the Parsis who, later on,
left this place in a body. A tradition preserved at Thana furnishes
an amusing instance of the manner in which the colony contrived to
escape a forced conversion to Christianity. The Parsis, constrained
to renounce their faith, and having no means of escape, succeeded by
cunning in avoiding the persecutions they were threatened with. They
repaired in a body to the go