scious of such crimes, expect from
ascending the funeral pile, with the bodies of their deceased
husbands who have caused them to commit such crimes?" "And you think
that there really is merit in such sacrifices on the part of widows,
who have done their duties in this life?"--"Assuredly I do, sir; if
there were none, why should God render them go insensible to the pain
of burning? I have seen many widows burn themselves in my time, and
watched them from the time they first declared their intention to
their death; and they all seemed to me to feel nothing whatever from
the flames: nothing, sir, but support from above could sustain them
through such trials. Depend upon it, sir, that no widow of a Rajpoot
murderer of his own offspring would ever be so supported; they knew
very well that they would not be so; and, therefore, very wisely
never ventured to expose themselves to the trial: faithful wives and
good mothers only could so venture. The Rajpoots, sir, and their
wives were pleased at the prohibition, because others could no longer
do what they dared not do!" "What do you think, Seetarum?"--"I think,
sir, that this crime of infanticide had its origin solely in family
pride, which will make people do almost anything. These proud
Rajpoots did not like to put it into any man's power to call them
_salahs_ or _sussoors_,* (brothers-in-law or fathers-in-law).

[* These are terms of abuse all over India. To call a man sussoor or
salah, in abuse, is to say to him, I have dishonoured your daughter
or your sister!]

"I remember an instance of a woman burning herself at Lasoora, six
miles from Biswa, when I was fifteen years of age, and I am now
twenty-five. She certainly seemed to suffer no pain. One forenoon she
told her husband that in a former birth she had promised him that
when he should be born a _maha brahman_ at Biswa, she would unite
herself in marriage to him, and live with him as his wife for twelve
years; that these twelve years had now expired, and that she had that
night received intimation from Heaven that her real husband, _Rajah
Kirpah Shunker_, of Muthura, had died without having been married in
this birth; that she was in reality his wife, and had already burnt
herself five times with his body, and would now mix her ashes with
his for the sixth time, and he must forthwith send her to the village
of Lasoora, where she would become a suttee. The husband was
astounded, for they had always lived together on the