small pit of about eight feet square, and three or four feet deep,
before several thousand spectators who had assembled to see the
suttee. All strangers dispersed before evening, as there seemed to be
no prospect of my yielding to the urgent solicitations of her family,
who dared not touch food till she had burned herself, or declared
herself willing to return to them. Her sons, grandsons, and some
other relations remained with her, while the rest surrounded my
house, the one urging me to allow her to burn, and the other urging
her to desist. She remained sitting on a bare rock in the bed of the
Nerbudda, refusing every kind of sustenance, and exposed to the
intense heat of the sun by day, and the severe cold of the night,
with only a thin sheet thrown over her shoulders. On Thursday, to cut
off all hope of her being moved from her purpose, she put on the
dhaja, or coarse red turban, and broke her bracelets in pieces, by
which she became dead in law, and for ever excluded from caste.
Should she choose to live after this, she could never return to her
family. Her children and grandchildren were still with her, but all
their entreaties were unavailing; and I became satisfied that she
would starve herself to death, if not allowed to burn, by which the
family would be disgraced, her miseries prolonged, and I myself
rendered liable to be charged with a wanton abuse of authority, for
no prohibition of the kind I had issued had as yet received the
formal sanction of the Government.

On Saturday, the 28th, in the morning, I rode out ten miles to the
spot, and found the poor old widow sitting with the dhaja round her
head, a brass plate before her with undressed rice and flowers, and a
coco-nut in each hand. She talked very collectedly, telling me that
'she had determined to mix her ashes with those of her departed
husband, and should patiently wait my permission to do so, assured
that God would enable her to sustain life till that was given, though
she dared not eat or drink'. Looking at the sun, then rising before
her over a long and beautiful reach of the Nerbudda river, she said
calmly, 'My soul has been for five days with my husband's near that
sun, nothing but my earthly frame is left; and this, I know, you will
in time suffer to be mixed with the ashes of his in yonder pit,
because it is not in your nature or usage wantonly to prolong the
miseries of a poor old woman'.

'Indeed, it is not,--my object and duty is to sav