This faith has had adherents in India for eleven centuries. Driven out by Mohammedanism from [pg 058] their home in Persia, the Parsees found refuge in India. There are only 100,000 of these followers of Zoroaster in the world. 90,000 of them are in India; and nearly all of these reside in Bombay and its vicinity. Their faith, Zoroastrianism, is the purest of ethnic religions. It has preserved its ancient integrity and high tone much better than its sister faith, Brahmanism. Among the members of this religion are found men possessed of great enterprise, much wealth, the spirit of progress and of philanthropy and culture. They give high honour and position to their women, and in all matters of civilization are considerably in advance of even the best class of Hindus.

This religion, though from the same source with Brahmanism, has fundamental differences of doctrine from that faith. None is more marked or significant than its Dualism as contrasted with the Pantheism of its sister faith. The problem of the origin of evil has found these two diverse interpretations and these have had a large influence in shaping the characters, respectively, of these two great ethnic religions.

Besides the far-off common source of these two religions, indicated by the earliest names and character of their deities, there is hardly any bond of fellowship in doctrine, worship or observance between the fire worshipping Parsee and the Hindu idolater. And though these Parsees have, for more than a millennium, made India their home, they have kept themselves apart from the people of the land and are still as truly foreigners in the land of their adoption as are the English residents.