Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/349

P A R P A 11 327 ration of the six periods of creation. About the 21st of March, the vernal equinox, a festival is held in honour of agriculture, when planting begins. In the middle of April a feast is held to celebrate the creation of trees, shrubs, and flowers. On the fourth day of the sixth month a feast is held in honour of Sahrevar, the deity presiding over mountains and mines. On the sixteenth day of the seventh month a feast is held in honour of Mithra, the deity pre siding over and directing the course of the sun, and also a festival to celebrate truth and friendship. On the tenth day of the eighth month a festival is held in honour of Farvardin, the deity who pre sides over the departed souls of men. This day is especially set apart for the performance of ceremonies for the dead. The people attend on the hills where the " towers of silence " are situated, and perform in the sagris prayers for the departed souls. The Parsis are enjoined by their religion to preserve the memory of the dead by annual religious ceremonies performed in the house, as said above ; but such of their friends as die on long voyages, or in un known places, and the date of whose death cannot be known, are honoured by sabred rites on this day. The Parsi scriptures require the List ten days of the year to be spent in doing deeds of charity, and in prayers of thanksgiving to Ahura-Mazda. On the day of Yazdagird,or New Year s Day, the Parsis emulate the Western world in rejoicing and social intercourse. They rise early, and after having performed their prayers and ablutions dress themselves in a new suit of clothes, and sally forth to the " fire-temples," to wor ship the emblem of their divinity, the sacred fire, which is perpetu ally burning on the altar. Unless they duly perform this ceremony they believe their souls will not be allowed to pass the bridge "Chinvad, " leading to heaven. After they have performed their religious services, they visit their relations and friends, when the ceremony of "hamijur," or joining of hands, is performed. The ceremony is a kind of greeting by which they wish each other " a happy new year." Their relatives and friends are invited to dinner, and they spend the rest of the day in feasting and rejoicing ; alms are given to the poor, and new suits of clothes are presented to the servants and dependants. There are only two distinct castes among the Parsis, the priests (dasturs, or high priests ; mobeds, or the middle order of priests ; and herbads, or the lowest order of priests) and the people (bchadtn, beJidin, or " followers of the best religion"). The priestly oliice is hereditary, and no one can become a priest who was not born in the purple ; but the son of a priest may become a layman. The secular affairs of the Parsis are managed by an elective com mittee, or Panch&yat, composed of six dasturs and twelve mobeds, making a council of eighteen. Its functions resemble the Venetian council of ten, and its objects are to preserve unity, peace, arid justice amongst the followers of Zarathustra. One law of the Panchayat is singular in its difference from the law or custom of any other native community in Asia ; nobody who has a wife living shall marry another, except under peculiar circumstances, such as the barrenness of the living wife, or her immoral conduct. It is a matter of just pride that we find the Parsis have not imitated the barbarous and tyrannical custom of prohibiting widows from re marrying which is so prevalent among the Hindus. Their religion teaches them benevolence as the first principle, and no people practise it with more liberality. A beggar among the Parsis is unknown, and would be a scandal to the society. In the city of Bombay alone they have thirty -two different charitable institutions. The sagacity, activity, and commercial enterprise of the Parsis are proverbial in the East, and their credit as merchants is almost unlimited. They frequently control the opium production of India, which amounts annually to something like 10,000,000 sterling. They have some fifty large commercial houses in Bombay, fourteen in Calcutta, twenty in Hong-Kong, ten in Shanghai, four in London, three in Amoy, two in Yokohama, and many throughout India, Persia, and Egypt. Further, their interest in the extension of agriculture in India is prominent; they are also very much esteemed as railway contractors or rail way guards. It is often said that the Parsis are superstitious about extinguishing fire, but this is a mistake. They are the only people in the world who do not smoke tobacco, or some other stimulating weed. Their reverence for fire as a symbol of Ahura- Mazda prevents them from dealing with it lightly. They would not play with fire, nor extinguish it unnecessarily; and they generally welcome the evening blaze with a prayer of thanksgiving. Then- religion forbids them to defile any of the creations of Ahura-Mazda, such as the earth, water, trees, flowers, &c., and on no account would a Parsi indulge in the disgusting habit of expectoration. They have been accustomed to the refinement of tinger-bowls after meals for several thousand years, and resort to ablutions frequently. Of all the natives of India the Parsis are most desirous of receiving the benefits of an English education, and their eagerness to embrace the science and literature of the West has been conspicuous in the wide spread of female education among them. The difference between the Parsis of thirty years ago and those of the present day is simply the result of English education and intercourse with Englishmen. The condition of the Parsi priesthood, however, demands improvement. Very few of them understand their litur gical /and works, although able to recite parrot-like all the chapters requiring to be repeated on occasions of religious cere monies, for which services they receive the regulated fees, and from them mainly they derive a subsistence. It is, however, very gratifying to notice an attempt that is now being made to impart a healthy stimulus to the priesthood for the study of their religious books. Two institutions, styled the " Alulla Firoz Madrusa" and the "Sir Jamsetji Jijibhai Madrasa," have been estab lished under the superintendence of competent teachers. Here the study of Zand, Pazand, Pahlavi, and Persian is cultivated ; and many of the sons of the present ignorant priests will occupy a higher position in the society of their countrymen than their parents now enjoy. The present dasturs are intelligent and well-informed men, possessing a sound knowledge of their religion ; but the mass of the mobeds and herbads are profoundly ignorant of its first principles. As active measures are being devised for improvement, the darkness of the present will doubtless be suc ceeded by a bright dawn in the future. (A. F. ) PARSON is a technical term of English law, and is a corruption of persona, the parson being, as it were, the persona ecclesix, or representative of the church in the parish. Parson imparsonee (persona impersonatci) is he that as rector is in possession of a church parochial, and of whom the church is full, whether it be presentative or impropriate (Coke upon Littleton, 300 b). The word parson is properly used only of a rector, though it is some times loosely extended to any one in holy orders. Though every parson is a rector, every rector is not a parson. A parson must be in holy orders ; hence a lay rector could not be called a parson. The parson is tenant for life of the parsonage house, the glebe, the tithes, and other dues, so far as they are not appropriated. Further information on this subject will be found under ADVOWSON, BENEFICE, and TITHES, PARSONS, or PEESONS, ROBERT (1546-1610), a cele brated Jesuit, was the son of a blacksmith, and was born at Nether Stowey, near Bridgwater, England, in 1546. His precocity attracted the attention of the vicar of the parish, who gave him private instruction, and procured his entrance in 1563 as an exhibitioner to Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated B.A. in 1568, and M.A. in 1572. He was fellow, bursar, and dean of his college, but in 1574 he resigned his fellowship and offices, for reasons which have been disputed, some alleging improprieties of conduct, and others suspected disloyalty. Soon after his resignation he went to London, and thence in June to Louvain, where he spent some time in the company of Father William Good, a Jesuit. He then proceeded to Padua to carry out a previously conceived intention to study medicine, but further intercourse with English Jesuits so influenced his mind, that in July 1575 he entered the Jesuit Society at Rome. In 1580 he was selected along with Cam- pian, a former associate at Oxford, and others, to undertake a secret mission to England against Elizabeth. Through the vigilance of Burghley the plot was discovered and Campian arrested, but Parsons made his escape to Rouen, and occupied himself for some time in the composition of treasonable tracts against Elizabeth, which he caused to be secretly sent to England. In 1583 he returned to Rome, where he was appointed prefect of the English mission, and in 1586 chosen rector of the English seminary. He also devoted much energy to the establishment of seminaries elsewhere on the Continent, for the training of priests to be despatched to England to aid in reviving the cause of Romanism. After the disaster to the Spanish Armada in 1588, he endeavoured to persuade the Spanish monarch to undertake a second invasion, and, unsuccessful in this, he incited various plots against Elizabeth, all of which were, however, abortive. On the death of Cardinal Allen in 1594 he made strenuous efforts to be appointed his successor, and, failing in this, he retired to Naples until