ia,
and differ from their co-religionists of the North. Since their exodus,
they have not at all mixed with the people who received them; they are
such as they were then. Thus at the time of the Arabic conquest there
was no single race. The ethnical distribution, which can be observed
even now, existed already. The Guebres who remained in Persia were
the Turano-Aryans; the emigrants, who had chiefly started from the
south of the kingdom, were Aryans." [48]

The condition of the Zoroastrians who had remained behind in Persia
had been, as we have said, always miserable. In 1511, they wrote to
their co-religionists who had taken refuge at Naosari, that since the
reign of Kaiomar, they had not endured such sufferings, even under
the execrable government of Zohak, Afrasiab, Tur and Alexander! As
a matter of fact, the connection between the two communities, which
had been broken, was happily renewed since the end of the fifteenth
century. At this period Changa Asa, a rich and pious Parsi of Naosari,
had at his own expense sent a learned layman, Nariman Hoshang, with
the view of acquiring from the members of the Iranian clergy certain
information regarding important religious questions. (Parsee Prakash,
pp. 6-7.)

In another letter to their co-religionists in India dated from
Serfabad, September 1, 1486, Nariman Hoshang declared that all the
Iranians had been desiring for centuries to know if any of their
co-religionists still existed on the other side of the world! After
an absence of several years he returned to India, and eight years
later went back to Persia, where he collected the most curious
information. These statements are confirmed by the letters of the
Guebres addressed to the Parsi community of India (1511), in which
it is said that "since their departure from Persia to the arrival
of Nariman Hoshang (in all thirty years) the Mazdiens had not known
that their co-religionists had settled in India, and that it was only
through Nariman Hoshang that they had come to know of it."

From that period the relations between the Guebres and the Parsis
were sufficiently close. As far back as 1527, one Kama Asa, from
Cambay, had gone to Persia and procured a complete copy of the
Arda-Viraf-Nameh. In 1626 the Parsis of Bharooch, Surat, and Naosari
sent to Persia a learned man of Surat, Behman Aspandiar, charged
with numerous questions; he brought back the answers, and also two
religious books, the Vishtasp-Yasht and the Visp