Page:Sketches of some distinguished Indian women.djvu/135

 Avesta is at all as ancient as it claims to be, or that it is in any real sense the work of Zoroaster.

Mr. Sorabji married a Hindu convert to Christianity, and together they both laboured at Nassick, where they are still remembered and welcomed with affection, and where most of their children were born.

Mrs. Sorabji herself is a woman of rare intellectual power, allied to a force of character and a spiritual charm such as are seldom to be met with. As six daughters were born to her one after another, her neighbours gathered round her to condole with her, because that no son had come to redeem the family. According to Indian ideas a woman's hope of happiness, on earth or after death, depends upon her being the mother of a son, so that the birth of daughters can only be considered a trouble and a disgrace. But Mrs. Sorabji thought otherwise ; already she had grasped the idea that the salvation and regeneration of Indian society should be wrought by its women, and she gazed proudly on her little flock, and counted them all as sons.

The fifth daughter, born at Nassick in 1866, received the name of Cornelia. Soon after her birth her parents removed farther south, and the child's first reminiscences are associated with a very lovely place in the Dekkan. There many happy years were spent, the early lessons being made delightful to the children by the mother's sweet and imaginative teach-