Across Coveted Lands Part 28

There are about a dozen public schools in Yezd, but the one conducted on most modern lines is the new school started by the Mushir. If I understood aright, the Mushir provided the buildings and money to work the school for a period of time, after which if successful it will be handed over to be supported by the city or by private enterprise.

The school was excellent. There were a hundred pupils from the ages of six to fifteen, and they were taught Arabic, Persian, English, French, geography, arithmetic, &c. There was a Mudir or head master who spoke French quite fluently, and separate teachers for the other various matters. The school was admirably conducted, with quite a military discipline mingled with extreme kindness and thoughtfulness on the part of the teachers towards the pupils. By the sound of a bell the boys were collected by the Mudir in the court-yard, round which on two floors were the schoolrooms, specklessly clean and well-aired.

While I was being entertained to tea, sherbet, and coffee, on a high platform, I was politely requested to ascertain for myself the knowledge of the boys--most of whom had only been in the school less than a year.

It was rather interesting to hear little chaps of six or eight rattle off, in a language foreign to them and without making a single mistake, all the capitals of the princ.i.p.al countries in the world, and the largest rivers, the highest mountains, the biggest oceans, and so on. And other little chaps--no taller than three feet--summed up and subtracted and divided and multiplied figures with an a.s.surance, quickness and accuracy which I, personally, very much envied. Then they wrote English and French sentences on the slate, and Persian and Arabic, and I came out of the school fully convinced that whatever was taught in that school was certainly taught well. These were not special pupils, but any pupil I chose to pick out from the lot.

I visited another excellent inst.i.tution, the Pa.r.s.ee school--one of several teaching inst.i.tutions that have been established in Yezd by the Bombay Society for the amelioration of Persian Zoroastrians,--in a most beautiful building internally, with large courts and a lofty vaulted hall wherein the cla.s.ses are held. The boys, from the ages of six to fifteen, lined the walls, sitting cross-legged on mats, their notebooks, inkstands, and slate by their side. At the time of my visit there were as many as 230 pupils, and they received a similar education, but not quite so high, as in the Mushir school. In the Pa.r.s.ee school less time was devoted to foreign languages.

Ustad Javan Mard, a most venerable old man, was the head-master, and Ustad Baharam his a.s.sistant. The school seemed most flourishing, and the pupils very well-behaved. Although the stocks for punishing bad children were very prominent under the teacher's table, the head-master a.s.sured me that they were seldom required.

Another little but most interesting school is the one in connection with the clerical work done by the Rev. Napier Malcolm. It is attended princ.i.p.ally by the sons of well-to-do Mussulmans and by a few Pa.r.s.ees, who take this excellent opportunity of learning English thoroughly. Most of the teaching is done by an Armenian a.s.sistant trained at the C. M. S.

of Julfa. Here, too, I was delightfully surprised to notice how intelligent the boys were, and Mr. Malcolm himself spoke in high terms of the work done by the students. They showed a great facility for learning languages, and I was shown a boy who, in a few months, had picked up sufficient English to converse quite fluently. The boys, I was glad to see, are taught in a very sensible manner, and what they are made to learn will be of permanent use to them.

The Church Missionary Society is to be thanked, not only for this good educational work which it supplies in Yezd to children of all creeds, but for the well-appointed hospital for men and women. A large and handsome caravanserai was presented to the Medical Mission by Mr. G.o.darz Mihri-ban-i-Irani, one of the leading Pa.r.s.ees of Yezd, and the building was adapted and converted by the Church Missionary Society into a hospital, with a permanent staff in the men's hospital of an English doctor and three Armenian a.s.sistants. There is also a smaller women's hospital with an English lady doctor, who in 1901 was aided by two ladies and by an Armenian a.s.sistant trained at Julfa.

There are properly disinfected wards in both these hospitals, with good beds, a well appointed dispensary, and dissecting room.

The natives have of late availed themselves considerably of the opportunity to get good medical a.s.sistance, but few except the very poorest, it seems, care actually to remain in the hospital wards. They prefer to take the medicine and go to their respective houses. A special dark room has been constructed for the operation and cure of cataract, which is a common complaint in Yezd.

The health of Yezd is uncommonly good, and were it not that the people ruin their digestive organs by excessive and injudicious eating, the ailments of Yezd would be very few. The population is, without exception, most favourable to the work of the Medical Mission, and all cla.s.ses seem to be grateful for the inst.i.tution in the town.

The school work of the Mission necessarily appeals to a much smaller circle, but there is no doubt whatever about its being appreciated, and, further, there seems to be exceedingly little hostility to such religious inquiry and teaching as does not altogether collide with or appear to tend to severance from the Mussulman or Pa.r.s.ee communities. This is very likely due to the fast extending influence of the Behai sect, the members of which regard favourably an acquaintance with other non-idolatrous religions. These people, notwithstanding their being outside of official protection and in collision with the Mullahs, form to-day a large proportion of the population of Yezd, and exercise an influence on public opinion considerably wider than the boundaries of their sect. As for actual Missionary work of Christianization going beyond this point, the difficulties encountered and the risks of a catastrophe are too great at present for any sensible man to attempt it.

The European staff of the C.M.S. Mission, employed entirely in educational and medical work in Yezd, consists of the Rev. Napier Malcolm, M.A., a most sensible and able man, and Mrs. Malcolm, who is of great help to her husband; George Day Esq., L.R.C.P. & S., and Mrs. Day; Miss Taylor, L.R.C.P. & S., Miss Stirling, Miss Brighty.

The work for ladies is somewhat uphill and not always pleasant, for in Mussulman countries women, if not veiled, are constantly exposed to the insults of roughs; but people are beginning to get reconciled to what appeared to them at first the very strange habits of European women, and no doubt in time it will be less unpleasant for ladies to work among the natives. So far the few English ladies who have braved the consequences of undertaking work in Persia are greatly to be admired for their pluck, patience, and tact.

The Yezd C.M.S. Mission was started in May, 1898, by Dr. Henry White, who had a year's previous experience of medical work at Julfa and Isfahan. He was then joined in December of the same year by the Rev. Napier Malcolm, who had just come out from England. The European community of Yezd is very small. Besides the above mentioned people--who do not always reside in Yezd--there are two Englishmen of the Bank of Persia, and a Swiss employed by the firm of Ziegler & Co. That is all.

The fact that the Persian Government recognizes the "race religions,"

such as those of Armenians, Pa.r.s.ees and Jews, has led many to believe that religious liberty exists in Persia. There is a relative tolerance, but nothing more, and even the Pa.r.s.ees and Jews have had until quite lately--and occasionally even now have--to submit to considerable indignities on the part of the Mullahs. For new sects like the Behai, however, who abandon the Mussulman faith, there is absolutely no official protection. Great secrecy has to be maintained to avoid persecution.

There seems, nevertheless, to be a disposition on the part of the Government to go considerably beyond this point of sufferance, but wider toleration does not exist at present, nor is it perfectly clear to what length the Government of the country would be prepared to go.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

The Guebres of Yezd--Askizar--The Sa.s.sanian dynasty--Yezdeyard--The name "Pa.r.s.ees"--The Arab invasion of Persia--A romantic tale--Zoroaster--Pa.r.s.ees of India--Why the Pa.r.s.ees remained in Yezd and Kerman--Their number--Oppression--The teaching of the Zoroastrian religion and of the Mahommedan--A refreshing quality--Family ties--Injustice--Guebre places of worship--The sacred fire--Religious ceremonies--Three excellent points in the Zoroastrian religion--The Pa.r.s.ees not "fire worshippers"--Purification of fire--No ancient sacred books--Attire--No civil rights--The "jazia" tax--Occupations--The Bombay Pa.r.s.ees Amelioration Society and its work--The pioneers of trade--A national a.s.sembly--Ardeshir Meheban Irani--Establishment of the a.s.sociation--Naturalized British subjects--Consulates wanted--The Bombay Pa.r.s.ees--Successful traders--Pa.r.s.ee generosity--Mr. Jamsetsji Tata.

Yezd is extremely interesting from a historical point of view, and for its close a.s.sociation with that wonderful race the "Guebres," better known in Europe by the name of Pa.r.s.ees. The ancient city of Askizar was buried by shifting sands, in a desert with a few oases, and was followed by the present Yezd, which does not date from earlier than the time of the Sa.s.sanian dynasty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ardeshir Meheban Irani and the Leading Members of the Anguman-i-Na.s.seri (Pa.r.s.ee National a.s.sembly), Yezd.]

Yezdeyard, the weak and unlucky last King of the Sa.s.san family, which had reigned over Persia for 415 years, was the first to lay the foundations of the city and to colonize its neighbourhood. It is in this city that, notwithstanding the sufferings and persecution of Mussulmans after the Arab invasion of Persia, the successors of a handful of brave people have to this day remained faithful to their native soil.

To be convinced that the Pa.r.s.ees of Yezd are a strikingly fine lot of people it is sufficient to look at them. The men are patriarchal, generous, sober, intelligent, thrifty; the women, contrary to the usage of all Asiatic races, are given great freedom, but are renowned for their chast.i.ty and modesty.

The name of Pa.r.s.ees, adopted by the better-known Guebres who migrated to India, has been retained from Fars or Pars, their native country, which contained, before the Arab invasion, Persepolis as the capital, with a magnificent royal palace. From this province the whole kingdom eventually adopted the name.

It is not necessary to go into the history of the nine dynasties which ruled in Persia before it was conquered by the Arabs, but for our purpose it is well to remind the reader that of all these dynasties the Sa.s.sanian was the last, and Yezdeyard, as we have seen, the ultimate King of the Sa.s.san family.

One is filled with horror at the romantic tale of how, through weakness on his part and treachery on that of his people, the fanatic Arabs, guided by the light of Allah the Prophet, conquered Persia, slaying the unbelievers and enforcing the Mahommedan religion on the survivors. The runaway Yezdeyard was treacherously slain with his own jewelled sword by a miller, in whose house he had obtained shelter after the disastrous battle of Nahavand and his flight through Sistan, Khora.s.san and Merv.

Persia, with every vestige of its magnificence, was lost for ever to the Persians, and the supremacy of Mahommedanism, with its demoralizing influence, its haughty intolerance and fanatic bigotism, was firmly established from one end of the country to the other. The fine temples, the shrines of the Zoroastrians, were mercilessly destroyed or changed into mosques.

Zoroaster, the prophet of the Pa.r.s.ees, had first promulgated his religion during the reign of Gushtasp (b.c. 1300) of the Kayanian family, but after centuries of vicissitudes and corruption it was not till the time of the Sa.s.sanian dynasty (a.d. 226) that Ardeshir Babekhan, the brave and just, restored the Zoroastrian religion to its ancient purity. It is this religion--the true religion of ancient Persia--that was smothered by the conquered Arabs by means of blood and steel, and is only to-day retained in a slightly modified character by the few remaining Guebres of Yezd and Kerman, as well as by those who, sooner than sacrifice their religious convictions and their independence, preferred to abandon their native land, migrating to India with their families, where their successors are to be found to this day still conservative to their faith.

It is not too much to say that, although--in the conglomeration of races that form the Indian Empire--the Pa.r.s.ees are few in number, not more than 100,000 all counted, they nevertheless occupy, through their honesty, intelligence and firmness of character, the foremost place in that country. But with these Pa.r.s.ees who migrated we have no s.p.a.ce to deal here. We will merely see why the remainder escaped death at the hands of the Mahommedans, and, while ever remaining true to their religion, continued in Yezd and Kerman when, under the new rulers, almost the whole of the Zoroastrian population of Persia was compelled to embrace the religion of Islam.

The fact that Yezd and Kerman were two distant and difficult places of access for the invading Moslems, may be taken as the likely cause of the Zoroastrians collecting there. Also for the same reason, no doubt, the Arabs, tired of fighting and slaying, and having given way to luxury and vice, had become too lazy to carry on their wholesale slaughter of the Zoroastrian population. This leniency, however, has not done away entirely with constant tyrannical persecution and oppression of the unbelievers, so that now the number of Zoroastrians of Yezd does not exceed 7,000, and that of Kerman is under 3,000. A great many Zoroastrians have, notwithstanding their unwillingness, been since compelled to turn Mahommedans. Even fifty years ago the Zoroastrians of Yezd and Kerman called in Persia contemptuously "Guebres," were subjected to degradations and restrictions of the worst kind. Now their condition, under a stronger government and some foreign influence, has slightly ameliorated, but is not yet entirely secure against the cruelty, fanaticism, and injustice of the Mullahs and officials in the place.

If Yezd is, for its size, now the most enterprising trading centre of Persia, it is mostly due to the Guebres living there. Although held in contempt by the Mullahs and by the Mahommedans in general, these Guebres are manly fellows, sound in body and brain, instead of lascivious, demoralized, effeminate creatures like their tyrants. Hundreds of years of oppression have had little effect on the moral and physical condition of the Guebres. They are still as hardy and proud as when the whole country belonged to them; nor has the demoralizing contact of the present race, to whom they are subject, had any marked effect on their industry, which was the most remarkable characteristic in the ancient Zoroastrians.

The Zoroastrian religion teaches that every man must earn his food by his own exertion and enterprise,--quite unlike the Mahommedan teaching, that the height of bliss is to live on the charity of one's neighbours, which rule, however, carries a counterbalancing conviction that the more money dispensed in alms, the greater the certainty of the givers obtaining after death a seat in heaven.

One of the most refreshing qualities of the Guebres (and of the Pa.r.s.ees in India) is that they are usually extraordinarily truthful for natives of Asia, and their morality, even in men, is indeed quite above the average. There are few races among which marriages are conducted on more sensible lines and are more successful. The man and woman united by marriage live in friendly equality, and are a help to one another. Family ties are very strong, and are carried down even to distant relations, while the paternal and maternal love for their children, and touching filial love for their parents, is most praiseworthy and deserves the greatest admiration.

The Mussulmans themselves, although religiously at variance and not keen to follow the good example of the Guebres, admit the fact that the Zoroastrians are honest and good people. It is princ.i.p.ally the Mullahs who are bitter against them and instigate the crowds to excesses. There is not such a thing for the Guebres as justice in Persia, and even up to quite recent times their fire temples and towers of silence were attacked and broken into by Mussulman crowds, the fires, so tenderly cared for, mercilessly put out: the sacred books destroyed, and the temples desecrated in the most insulting manner.

There are a number of Guebre places of worship in Yezd, and in the surrounding villages inhabited by Guebre agriculturists, but the princ.i.p.al one is in the centre of the Guebre quarter of Yezd city. It is a neat, small structure, very simple and whitewashed inside, with a fortified back room wherein the sacred fire is kept alight, well covered with ashes by a specially deputed priest. It is hidden so as to make it difficult for intending invaders to discover it; and the strong door, well protected by iron bars, wants a good deal of forcing before it can be knocked down.

The religious ceremony in the temple of the Guebres is very interesting, the officiating priests being dressed up in a long white garment, the _sudra_, held together by a sacred girdle, and with the lower portion of the face covered by a square piece of cloth like a handkerchief; on the head they wear a peculiar cap. Various genuflexions, on a specially spread carpet, and bows are made and prayers read.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pa.r.s.ee Priests of Yezd Officiating during Ceremony in their Fire Temple.]

The priests belong generally to the better cla.s.ses, and the rank is mostly hereditary. Certain ceremonies are considered necessary before the candidate can attain the actual dignity of a prelate. First of the ceremonies comes the _navar_, or six days' retreat in his own dwelling, followed by the ceremony of initiation; four more days in the fire temple with two priests who have previously gone through the _Yasna_ prayers for six consecutive mornings. Although after this he can officiate in some ceremonies, such as weddings, he is not fully qualified as a priest until the _Bareshnun_ has been undergone and again the _Yasna_. The following day other prayers are offered to the guardian spirit, and at midnight the last ceremony takes place, and he is qualified to the degree of _Maratab_, when he can take part in any of the Zoroastrian rituals.

As a preliminary, great purity of mind and body are required from candidates, and they are made to endure lavish ablutions of water and cow urine, clay and sand--an ancient custom, said to cleanse the body better than modern soaps. After that the candidate is secluded for nine whole days in the fire temple, and is not permitted to touch human beings, vegetation, water nor fire, and must wash himself twice more during that time, on the fourth day and on the seventh. It is only then that he is considered amply purified and able to go through the _Navar_ ceremony.

The Zoroastrian religion is based on three excellent points--"good thoughts, good words, good deeds"--and as long as people adhere to them it is difficult to see how they can go wrong. They worship G.o.d and only one G.o.d, and do not admit idolatry. They are most open-minded regarding other people's notions, and are ever ready to recognise that other religions have their own good points.

Perhaps no greater libel was ever perpetrated on the Pa.r.s.ees than when they were put down as "fire-worshippers," or "worshippers of the elements." The Pa.r.s.ees are G.o.d-worshippers, but revere, not worship, fire and the sun as symbols of glory, heat, splendour, and purity; also because fire is to human beings one of the most necessary things in creation, if not indeed the most necessary thing; otherwise they are no more fire-worshippers than the Roman Catholics, for instance, who might easily come under the same heading, for they have lighted candles and lights constantly burning in front of images inside their churches.

Besides, it is not the fire itself, as fire, that Pa.r.s.ees nurse in their temples, but a fire specially purified for the purpose. The process is this: Several fires, if possible originally lighted by some natural cause, such as lightning, are brought in vases. Over one of these fires is placed a flat perforated tray of metal on which small pieces of very dry sandal-wood are made to ignite by the mere action of the heat, but must not actually come in contact with the flame below. From this fire a third one is lighted in a similar manner, and nine times this operation is repeated, each successive fire being considered purer than its predecessor, and the result of the ninth conflagration being p.r.o.nounced absolutely pure.

It is really the idea of the purifying process that the Pa.r.s.ees revere more than the fire itself, and as the ninth fire alone is considered worthy to occupy a special place in their temples, so, in similarity to it, they aim in life to purify their own thoughts, words, and actions, and glorify them into "good thoughts, true words, n.o.ble actions." This is indeed very different from fire-worshipping of which the Pa.r.s.ees are generally accused.

In Yezd the Guebres told me that they possessed very few sacred books in their temple (or if they had them could not show them). They said that all the ancient books had been destroyed by the Mahommedans or had been taken away to India.

There were also several smaller temples in the neighbourhood of Yezd, which had gone through a good many vicissitudes in their time, but now the Pa.r.s.ees and their places of worship are left in comparative peace.

Pa.r.s.ee men and women are still compelled to wear special clothes so as to be detected at once in the streets, but this custom is gradually dying out. The women are garbed in highly-coloured striped garments, a short jacket and a small turban, leaving the face uncovered. The men are only allowed to wear certain specially-coloured cloaks and are not allowed to ride a horse in the streets of Yezd.

Pa.r.s.ees do not enjoy the civil rights of other citizens in Persia, and justice was until quite lately out of the question in the case of differences with Mussulmans. At death a man's property would be lawfully inherited by any distant relation who had adopted the religion of Moslem, instead of by the man's own children and wife who had remained faithful to their creed; and in the matter of recovering debts from Mussulmans the law of Persia is certainly very far indeed from helping a Guebre. This is necessarily a great obstacle in commercial intercourse.

Worst of all the burdens formerly inflicted upon the Guebres--as well as upon Armenians and Jews of Persia--was the "jazia" tax. Some thousand or so male Guebres of Yezd were ordered to pay the tax yearly, which with commissions and "squeezes" of Governors and officials was made to amount to some two thousand tomans, or about 400 at the present rate of exchange. Much severity and even cruelty were enforced to obtain payment of the tax.

The Pa.r.s.ees were, until quite lately, debarred from undertaking any occupation that might place them on a level with Mahommedans. With the exception of a few merchants--who, by migrating to India and obtaining British nationality, returned and enjoyed a certain amount of nominal safety--the majority of the population consists of agriculturists and scavengers.