In the short space of two centuries of undisturbed industry the Parsees have placed themselves in competition with the foremost of the Europeans in India. In liberality and enterprise they rank with the merchant-princes of England, and may be justly compared to the most famous merchants that America has produced in the last century, and yet no question has ever been raised as to the commercial integrity of the Parsees. In the Indian banks and various other stock companies the Parsees are prime movers. They are almost the exclusive owners of all the trading-steamers that now navigate the Indian and China seas. They are great landholders, and many of the finest residences in the island of Bombay are owned by Parsees. They have shared largely in introducing railways into India. Jamsetjee Dorabjee is now considered the foremost railroad contractor in India. The most difficult passes extending from the Thull Ghauts to the Kustsarah Mountains, covered with wild jungles, full of trap hills, mountain-torrents at one season of the year, and devoid of water at another, were laid open and made as easy of travel by railroad as the most finished roads in England or America. Many English officers of the engineer department have declared the building of this railroad across the Thull Ghauts and Kustsarah a more arduous undertaking than that of the great Pacific Railroad across the American continent.
Europe, during the great American War deprived suddenly of one of the chief products so necessary to her industries, resorted to India for cotton, and all at once the island of Bombay became not only the great centre of trade, but soon attracted to herself merchants and traders in cotton from the four quarters of the globe, each and all eagerly competing for the same prize, the monopoly of the cotton-market. Enormous fortunes were amassed in an incredibly short space of time, and for a brief period the whole commerce of the great East and West seemed to flow into the port of the small island of Bombay. Misinformed by the English press, and seemingly unwilling to investigate for themselves the true nature of the almost superhuman struggle carried on between kinsmen for the preservation of State rights and the suppression of slavery on the American continent, this eager crowd only foresaw what seemed the most natural, the utter destruction of the great republic of the United States and the magnificent future for themselves springing from the very ashes of this ruin. Thus assured, and blinded to every other consideration, even the wise and hitherto prudent merchants of Bombay became dazzled with the prospects in view, and launched forth into the most gigantic enterprises and into rash schemes for the utmost development of one and all the various resources of the country. Everywhere this feverish, insatiable thirst to profit by a great nation's approaching destruction displayed itself. Men and women who had never dreamed of speculating in stocks, the rich with his hundreds of thousands and the poor with hardly a few rupees to his name, master and servant, were alike seized with the distemper called by the few who looked calmly on "Rupea-Dewana," "the rupee-mad." How changed was the once happy population! What anxious faces, revealing lines of thought and care, of midnight toil, of mingled fear and hope! Still, the great drama went on, and for a short period immense fortunes were made in a day. But no sooner had the whole island gained sufficient encouragement to set on foot her gigantic schemes and rash enterprises, no sooner had she at one final throw staked all on the ruin of the Northern States, than came the appalling intelligence of General Lee's defeat. A fearful revulsion followed: sudden panic seized the busy world enclosed in the small compass of the Bombay "Commercial Square." Like a flock of birds, the business population took wing and vanished out of sight. The banks were closed, flourishing houses collapsed, firms disappeared, and an almost universal ruin stared every one in the face. The very atmosphere was filled with the despair of men who had so rashly staked all and lost all.
Painful as the lesson has been, it was a wholesome one, not only for all classes of merchants in British India, but for Old England herself. The merchants of Bombay are once more in their counting-rooms and warehouses, the banks are as firmly established as ever, with a richer experience and a more profound insight into the laws which govern the moral as well as the business world; they yet bid fair to render the beautiful island of Bambâ Dèvi the heart and centre of all the commerce of the East, even as she is now, owing to her remarkable sanitary conditions, the healthiest city in India. She is the second city in the British empire in point of numbers, having a population of six hundred thousand, and an average to the square mile exceeding that of London; nevertheless, the average death-rate for the past five years has been the same as that of London.
Bombay—University and Esplanade.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] "It cannot be denied," says Max Müller in his Origin and Growth of Religion, "that in the Avesta, as in the Vèda, Asha may often be translated by purity, and that it is most frequently used in reference to the proper performance of the sacrifices. Here the Asha consists in what is called 'good thoughts, good words, good deeds—good meaning ceremonially good or correct, without a false pronunciation, without a mistake in the sacrifice. But there are passages which show that Zoroaster also recognized the existence of a kosmos or rita. He also tells how the mornings go, and the noons, and the nights, and how they follow that which has been traced for them; he too admires the perfect friendship between the sun and the moon and the harmonies of living nature, the miracles of every birth, and how at the right time there is food for the mother to give her child.
"As in the Vèda, so in the Avesta, the universe follows the Asha, the worlds are the creation of Asha. The faithful while on earth pray for the maintenance of Asha, while after death they will join Ormuzd in the highest heaven, the abode of Asha. The pious worshipper protects the Asha; the world grows and prospers by Asha. The highest law of the world is Asha, and the highest ideal of the believer is to become Ashavan, possessed of Asha—i. e. righteousness."
[23] It is now very difficult to ascertain at what period the "dual principle" of good and evil formulated by Zoroaster was first applied to the sexes. It is clear, however, that in course of time the masculine energy came to be regarded as good and holy, and the feminine as evil and unholy; and there is no doubt that from that time the original idea of the mother as the household priestess or divinity underwent a slow but radical change; and at length the fall of woman from the lofty place assigned to her in the early Vèdic and Zoroastrian religions became an accomplished fact.