ABSTRACT
Under British rule in the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries a large proportion of the community enjoyed the fruits of commercial success, shared in the benefits of a Western education, and relished the taste of real political influence. According to the 1901 census there were 46,231 Parsis in Bombay, this represented practically half the Parsi population of India, but they contributed only about 6" of the Bombay population. Before the 1820s the Parsi level of education was as low as that of the rest of the population in Western India. Literacy was practically non-existent. In the 1840s and 1850s Parsis were educational pioneers in that they built more schools and attended them more regularly in proportion to their numbers, than any other Indian community did. To understand the religious changes of the early twentieth century, it is essential first to comment on some nineteenth-century developments in the field of Parsi religion.
