JAMSETJI NASARWANJI

TATA (1839-1904)  , Parsee merchant and philanthropist, was born at Nosari, in the state of Baroda, in 1839, and went as a boy to Bombay, where he was educated at the Elphinstone College . In 1858 he entered his father's office, and began a commercial career of the highest eminence, beginning with cotton mills at Bombay and also at Nagpur, and ending with the formation of a company to work the iron ores of the Central Provinces on modern principles . One of his best-known achievements was the lowering of the freights on Indian goods to China and Japan, as the result of a long struggle with the Nippon Yusen Kaisha Co . He also introduced a silk industry after Japanese methods into Mysore, and built the Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay . But his greatest benefaction is the endowment .of a research institute at Bangalore . He died at Nauheim, in Germany, on the 19th of May 1go4 .