Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/156

140 healthy, but they are hopelessly "mixed." Very often there is a long piece for quiet reading and meditation, which the pious Zoroastrian drawls out line by line with well-executed ejaculations and the approved nasal twang, but without the vaguest notion of what he is doing. This is a sorry exhibition, and to the younger generation it is becoming a farce. An educated person, with power to discriminate between right and wrong, cannot help repudiating idle formularies which consist in mere mumbling over an extent of jaw-breaking jargon. And yet there are sensible men in the community who cannot understand why a spirit of infidelity, a feeling certainly more dangerous than mere passive indifference, which in itself is ominous enough, should prevail in the Zoroastrian world. The reasons are obvious enough. There is very little element of genuine devotion in the formularies as at present gone through. There is no intelligent appreciation of the recitals. The priest says his prayers for hire. He mumbles a certain quantity of jargon without indicating the least appreciation. There is no solemnity, no dignity, often no decency in the performance of the hireling priest. He knows it all to be