DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22900#0093
chap, i.] THE PARSIS IN BOMB A Y. 51
the Parsis first gained some considerable importance
and came into contact with Europeans. The earliest
period at which we find any mention of them in this
city of the Great Mogul is in the year 1478.
No authentic records exist to show the exact date
of the arrival of the Parsis in Bombay, nor can we
authoritatively explain what was the motive that first
led them there. It seems probable that the English
merchants of Surat induced some of them to settle in
Bombay for purposes of trade. This much may, how-
ever, be safely affirmed, that their first settlement in
that island was a little before the time when it was
ceded to the British by the Crown of Portugal, as the
dowry of Catherine, Princess of that country, who
became the wife of Charles the Second of England,
a.d. 1668.
Dr. Fryer, who visited Bombay in the year 1671,
says : "On the other side of the great inlet to the sea
is a great point abutting against Old Woman's Island,
and is called Malabar Hill, a rocky woody mountain,
yet sends forth long grass; on the top of all is a
Par si tomb lately raised."1 The first work of the
Parsis wherever they settle is to construct a tower
of silence or what Dr. Fryer calls a tomb for the recep-
tion of their dead, and his statement that the tomb
1 This "dokhma" still exists on Malabar Hill. It was built by
one Hirji Watcha, an ancestor of the Watcha Ghandhi family of the
present day.
the Parsis first gained some considerable importance
and came into contact with Europeans. The earliest
period at which we find any mention of them in this
city of the Great Mogul is in the year 1478.
No authentic records exist to show the exact date
of the arrival of the Parsis in Bombay, nor can we
authoritatively explain what was the motive that first
led them there. It seems probable that the English
merchants of Surat induced some of them to settle in
Bombay for purposes of trade. This much may, how-
ever, be safely affirmed, that their first settlement in
that island was a little before the time when it was
ceded to the British by the Crown of Portugal, as the
dowry of Catherine, Princess of that country, who
became the wife of Charles the Second of England,
a.d. 1668.
Dr. Fryer, who visited Bombay in the year 1671,
says : "On the other side of the great inlet to the sea
is a great point abutting against Old Woman's Island,
and is called Malabar Hill, a rocky woody mountain,
yet sends forth long grass; on the top of all is a
Par si tomb lately raised."1 The first work of the
Parsis wherever they settle is to construct a tower
of silence or what Dr. Fryer calls a tomb for the recep-
tion of their dead, and his statement that the tomb
1 This "dokhma" still exists on Malabar Hill. It was built by
one Hirji Watcha, an ancestor of the Watcha Ghandhi family of the
present day.