9. Their migration to India and settlement there.
The migration of the Pārsis to India dates from the Arab conquest of Persia in A.D. 638–641. The refugees at first fled to the hills, and after passing through a period of hardship moved down to the coast and settled in the city of Ormuz. Being again persecuted, a party of them set sail for India and landed in Gujarāt. There were probably two migrations, one immediately after the Arab conquest in 641, and the second from Ormuz as described above in A.D. 750. Their first settlement was at Sanjān in Gujarāt, and from here they spread to various other cities along the coast. During their period of prosperity at Sanjān they would seem to have converted a large section of the Hindu population near Thāna. The first settlers in Gujarāt apparently took to tapping palm trees for toddy, and the Pārsis have ever since been closely connected with the liquor traffic. The Portuguese writer Garcia d’Orta (A.D. 1535) notices a curious class of merchants and shopkeepers, who were called Coaris, that is Gaurs, in Bassein, and Esparis or Pārsis in Cambay. The Portuguese called them Jews; but they were no Jews, for they were uncircumcised and ate pork. Besides they came from Persia and had a curious written character, strange oaths and many foolish superstitions, taking their dead out by a special door and exposing the bodies till they were destroyed. In 1578, at the request of the Emperor Akbar, the Pārsis sent learned priests to explain to him the Zoroastrian faith. They found Akbar a ready listener and taught him their peculiar rites and ceremonies. Akbar issued orders that the sacred fire should be made over to the charge of Abul Fazl, and that after the manner of the kings of Persia, in whose temples blazed perpetual fires, Abul Fazl should take care that the sacred fire was never allowed to go out either by night or day, for that it was one of the signs of god and one light from among the many lights of his creation. Akbar, according to Portuguese accounts, was invested with the sacred shirt and girdle, and in return granted the Gujarāt priest Meherji Rāna an estate near Naosari, where his descendants have ever since been chief priests.[16]