through numberless cycles of existence. They would firmly resist the invasion of the spiritual domain by uncompromising materialism, which would insist on dissipating all the allegories, symbolisms, personifications, and theosophies, leaving only the mechanical processes of plastic matter, the observation of phenomena, and, possibly, as some cold comfort. the worship of Humanity. If we are to have the cultus of Humanity, why not of all sentient life, of nature in its totality? And that will bring us round again to a materialistic pantheism. But the Hindu mind is essentially speculative and transcendental; it will never consent to be shut up in the prison of sensual experience, for it has grasped and holds firmly the central idea that all things are manifestations of some power outside phenomena. And the tendency of contemporary religious discussion in India, so far as it can be followed from a distance, is towards an ethical reform on the old foundations, towards searching for some method of reconciling their Vedic theology with the practice of religion taken as a rule of conduct and a system of moral government. One can already discern a movement in various quarters towards a recognition of impersonal theism, and towards fixing the teaching of the philosophical schools upon some definitely authorized system of faith and morals, which may satisfy a rising ethical standard, and may thus permanently embody that tendency to substitute spiritual devotion for external forms and caste rules which is the characteristic of the sects that have from time to time dissented from orthodox Brahminism. A. C. LYALL. ZOROASTRIANISM AND THE PARSIS AMONG the numerous divisions and subdivisions of Indian castes, there is a foreign ethnical group, which, in spite of its alien environments and utter isolation, has been able for centuries to preserve the purity of its race and faith and most of its traditional customs. We mean the adepts of the prophet of Iran, Zoroaster, successively called by the European travellers who have met them on the Indian coast, "Parseos," " "Parses, "Parsees, "Parsis"; they are the descendants of the fugitives who fled from Persia after the Mohammedan conquest, and settled at Sanjan in the eighth century of the Christian era. What was their exact number? Probably a very small one. Was this exodus from Persia the only one? It appears that several others took place, traces of which can be found in upper India; but the colony of Guzarat alone resisted the influence of their surroundings, and did not merge into the native populations. Nevertheless, they were they are still-a mere drop in the vast ocean of |