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Awakening of the communal conscience. The advent of the British in India, and an era of peace, justice, and security of life and property, ushered in by them, opened a new page in the history of the Parsis. Having a ready scope, the means of adaptation, and also elasticity in their religion, they now began to assert their latent capacity, and soon emerged from the obscurity in which they had lived, to become henceforth the foremost people in India in matters educational, industrial, and social. They came in the vanguard of progress, amassed vast fortunes, and munificently gave away large sums in charity. This unprecedented economic prosperity helped the revival of learning among the Zoroastrians. The new epoch of the revival of learning gave new hopes for a period of formation and life. Various educational institutions had been founded, and the Parsis faced the problem of the responsibility of universal franchise in the world of letters. The average Parsi child of both the sexes entered the schools founded on European lines by the community during the first half of the last century, in various centres of Parsi population, and education on Western standards spread with accelerated rapidity.

The new knowledge profoundly modified the religious conceptions of the young. The inroads of Western ideas and culture undermined the old ideals, and modified many of the beliefs sanctified by ages. It was the opening of a new age for the Parsis, in which they witnessed the waning of the power of authority and the waxing of the demand for the verification of religious truths. The transition from the old to the new was bound to be disruptive. The new spirit that had taken hold of the community stirred it to its lowest depth. It threatened the community with an intellectual revolt from the new school. The reaction was bound to come, and come it did. It was violent, as all reaction is apt to be, and it ended in indifferentism. The