hite if she was less than twenty-five at her husband's
death, and red if she was older. Temples, religious ceremonies, society,
are closed to her for ever. She has no right to speak to any of her
relations, and no right to eat with them. She sleeps, eats and works
separately; her touch is considered impure for seven years. If a man,
going out on business, meets a widow, he goes home again, abandoning
every pursuit, because to see a widow is accounted an evil omen.

In the past all this was seldom practised, and concerned only the rich
widows, who refused to be burned; but now, since the Brahmans have
been caught in the false interpretation of the Vedas, with the criminal
intention of appropriating the widows' wealth, they insist on the
fulfilment of this cruel precept, and make what once was the exception
the rule. They are powerless against British law, and so they revenge
themselves on the innocent and helpless women, whom fate has deprived of
their natural protectors. Professor Wilson's demonstration of the means
by which the Brahmans distorted the sense of the Vedas, in order to
justify the practice of widow-burning, is well worth mentioning. During
the many centuries that this terrible practice prevailed, the Brahmans
had appealed to a certain Vedic text for their justification, and had
claimed to be rigidly fulfilling the institutes of Manu, which contain
for them the interpretation of Vedic law. When the East India Company's
Government first turned its attention to the suppression of suttee,
the whole country, from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, rose in protest,
under the influence of the Brahmans. "The English promised not to
interfere in our religious affairs, and they must keep their word!" was
the general outcry. Never was India so near revolution as in those days.
The English saw the danger and gave up the task. But Professor Wilson,
the best Sanskritist of the time, did not consider the battle lost. He
applied himself to the study of the most ancient MSS., and gradually
became convinced that the alleged precept did not exist in the
Vedas; though in the Laws of Manu it was quite distinct, and had been
translated accordingly by T. Colebrooke and other Orientalists. An
attempt to prove to the fanatic population that Manu's interpretation
was wrong would have been equivalent to an attempt to reduce water to
powder. So Wilson set himself to study Manu, and to compare the text of
the Vedas with the text of this la