Karaka, Dosabhai Framji: History of the Parsis: including their manners, customs, religion and present position ; in two volumes (Band 1) (London, 1884)

chap, v.] TWO IMPORTANT ACTS.

257

it needless to reproduce here the various reasons
adduced by the Commission on the strength of
the evidence, written, oral, and traditional, given by
the witnesses examined before it. It will be suffi-
cient for us to state the several heads of inquiry to
which the Commission directed its attention, and to
record briefly the conclusions to which it came and
which led that body to recommend to the Legislature
the passing of the Parsi Succession Act (No. 10 of
1865) and the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act (No.
15 of 18G5). The first j)oint which presented itself
to the Commission for consideration was :—

What, if any, are the usages recognised as law by the Parsis of
India as to the right of females to inherit from intestate male
Parsis 1

On this question, after full inquiry, the Commission
came to the same conclusion as that arrived at by Mr.
Borradaile in the year 1825, viz. that the Parsis had
no law, for such books as they had before they emi-
grated from Persia were at that time all lost, and the
rules which, by their engagement with the Hindu
chief of Sanjan, they bound themselves to obey
formed, together with the custom of the country
which they insensibly adopted in their intercourse
with the people, a body of rules or common law
differing in few respects from that custom of the
country founded on Hindu law which regulates the
whole of a Hindu's life.

VOL. I. S