Page:The World's Parliament of Religions Vol 1.djvu/242

 214 INTRODUCTION TO PARLIAMENT PAPERS. wife ought to be cheerful toward him when he works, entertain his friends, care for his dependents, never do anything he does not wish, take good care of the wealth he has accum- ulated, and not be idle, but always cheerful when at work her- self. Parents are to help their children by preventing them from doing sinful acts, by guiding them in the paths of virtue, by educating them, by providing them with husbands or wives suitable to them, and by leaving them legacies. Parents in old age expect their children to take care of them, to do all their work and business, to maintain the household, and after death to do honor to their remains by being charitable. In an eleventh-day paper on women in India, Miss Jeanne Sorabji corrected the current view that family life in India, because of the seclusion of women, involves their ignorance and inferiority. All the many voices of India declare that elevation and improvement mark the condition of women, even behind the bars of traditional seclusion. The nobly- born ladies who shrink from contact with the world, do not lack thirst for knowledge, and but for custom they would gladly emerge from seclusion. They make perfect business women, and manage affairs of state even with distinction. The customary seclusion is melting away. In many directions Indian women are beginning to attain to places of public influence and distinction. From a religious point of view, the education of children is a great question with the Parsees. It is a spiritual duty of all Zoroastrian parents, not only of benefit to the children themselves, but enhancing the meritoriousness of parents, so far as it bears fruit in the good acts and right lives of the chil- dren. Home education with parents, especially the mother, until seven years of age is the rule. At the age of seven, after some religious instruction, the child is invested with the Sudreh and Kusti, — the sacred shirt and thread, — a ceremony of the character of a confirmation. The Parsee may wear whatever outward dress his circumstances suggest, but under it he must always have the shirt and the thread as symbols full of meaning and serving as perpetual monitors. Several times