The Suttee.
A rich buniyā, a corn chandler, whose house was near the gate of our grounds, departed this life; he was an Hindoo. On the 7th of November, the natives in the bazār were making a great noise with their tom-toms, drums, and other discordant musical instruments, rejoicing that his widow had determined to perform suttee, i.e. to burn on his funeral-pile.
The magistrate sent for the woman, used every argument to dissuade her, and offered her money. Her only answer was, dashing her head on the floor, and saying, “If you will not let me burn with my husband, I will hang myself in your court of justice.” The shāstrs say, “The prayers and imprecations of a suttee are never uttered in vain; the great gods themselves cannot listen to them unmoved.”
If a widow touch either food or water from the time her husband expires until she ascend the pile, she cannot, by Hindoo law, be burned with the body; therefore the magistrate kept the corpse forty-eight hours, in the hope that hunger would compel the woman to eat. Guards were set over her, but she never touched any thing. My husband accompanied the magistrate to see the suttee: about 5000 people were collected together on the banks of the Ganges: the pile was then built, and the putrid body placed upon it; the magistrate stationed guards to prevent the people from approaching it. After having bathed in the river, the widow lighted a brand, walked round the pile, set it on fire, and then mounted cheerfully: the flame caught and blazed up instantly; she sat down, placing the head of the corpse on her lap, and repeated several times the usual form, “Ram, Ram, suttee; Ram, Ram, suttee,” i.e. “God, God, I am chaste.”
As the wind drove the fierce fire upon her, she shook her arms and limbs as if in agony; at length she started up and approached the side to escape. An Hindoo, one of the police who had been placed near the pile to see she had fair play, and should not be burned by force, raised his sword to strike her, and the poor wretch shrank back into the flames. The magistrate seized and committed him to prison. The woman again approached the side of the blazing pile, sprang fairly out, and ran into the Ganges, which was within a few yards. When the crowd and the brothers of the dead man saw this, they called out, “Cut her down, knock her on the head with a bamboo; tie her hands and feet, and throw her in again;” and rushed down to execute their murderous intentions, when the gentlemen and the police drove them back.
The woman drank some water, and having extinguished the fire on her red garment, said she would mount the pile again and be burned.
The magistrate placed his hand on her shoulder (which rendered her impure), and said, “By your own law, having once quitted the pile you cannot ascend again; I forbid it. You are now an outcast from the Hindoos, but I will take charge of you, the Company will protect you, and you shall never want food or clothing.”
He then sent her, in a palanquin, under a guard, to the hospital. The crowd made way, shrinking from her with signs of horror, but returned peaceably to their homes; the Hindoos annoyed at her escape, and the Mussulmans saying, “It was better that she should escape, but it was a pity we should have lost the tamāshā (amusement) of seeing her burnt to death.”
Had not the magistrate and the English gentlemen been present, the Hindoos would have cut her down when she attempted to quit the fire; or had she leapt out, would have thrown her in again, and have said, “She performed suttee of her own accord, how could we make her? it was the will of God.” As a specimen of their religion the woman said, “I have transmigrated six times, and have been burned six times with six different husbands; if I do not burn the seventh time, it will prove unlucky for me!” “What good will burning do you?” asked a bystander. She replied, “The women of my husband’s family have all been suttees, why should I bring disgrace upon them? I shall go to heaven, and afterwards re-appear on earth, and be married to a very rich man.” She was about twenty or twenty-five years of age, and possessed of some property, for the sake of which her relatives wished to put her out of the world.
If every suttee were conducted in this way, very few would take place in India. The woman was not much burned, with the exception of some parts on her arms and legs. Had she performed suttee, they would have raised a little cenotaph, or a mound of earth by the side of the river, and every Hindoo who passed the place returning from bathing would have made sālām to it; a high honour to the family. While we were in Calcutta, many suttees took place; but as they were generally on the other side of the river, we only heard of them after they had occurred. Here the people passed in procession, flags flying, and drums beating, close by our door. I saw them from the verandah; the widow, dressed in a red garment, was walking in the midst. My servants all ran to me, begging to be allowed to go and see the tamāshā (fun, sport), and having obtained permission, they all started off, except one man, who was pulling the pankhā, and he looked greatly vexed at being obliged to remain. The sāhib said, the woman appeared so perfectly determined, he did not think she would have quitted the fire. Having performed suttee according to her own account six times before, one would have thought from her miraculous incombustibility, she had become asbestos, only purified and not consumed by fire. I was glad the poor creature was not murdered; but she will be an outcast; no Hindoo will eat with her, enter her house, or give her assistance; and when she appears they will point at her and give her abuse. Her own and her husband’s family would lose caste if they were to speak to her: but, as an example, it will prevent a number of women from becoming suttees, and do infinite good: fortunately, she has no children. And these are the people called in Europe the “mild inoffensive Hindoos!”
The woman was mistress of a good house and about 800 rupees; the brothers of her deceased husband would, after her destruction, have inherited the property.
The burning of the widow is not commanded by the shāstrs: to perform suttee is a proof of devotion to the husband. The mountain Himalaya, being personified, is represented as a powerful monarch: his wife, Mena; their daughter is called Parvuti, or mountain-born, and Doorga, or difficult of access. She is said to have been married to Shivŭ in a pre-existing state when she was called Sŭtēē. After the marriage, Shivŭ on a certain occasion offended his father-in-law, King Dŭkshŭ, by refusing to make sālām to him as he entered the circle in which the king was sitting.
To be revenged, the monarch refused to invite Shivŭ to a sacrifice which he was about to perform. Sŭtēē, the king’s daughter, however, was resolved to go, though uninvited and forbidden by her husband. On her arrival, Dŭkshŭ poured a torrent of abuse on Shivŭ, which affected Sŭtēē so much that she died.
In memory of this proof of great affection, a Hindoo widow burning with her husband on the funeral-pile, is called a Sŭtēē.
The following passages are from the Hindoo Shāstrs:—
“There are 35,000,000 hairs on the human body. The woman who ascends the pile with her husband, will remain so many years in heaven.”
“As the snake draws the serpent from its hole, so she, rescuing her husband (from hell), rejoices with him.”
“The woman who expires on the funeral-pile of her husband, purifies the family of her mother, her father, and her husband.”
“So long as a woman, in her successive transmigrations, shall decline burning herself, like a faithful wife, on the same fire with her deceased lord, so long shall she not be exempted from springing again to life in the body of some female animal.”
TEMPLE OF BHAWĀNĪ AND SUTTEES ALOPEE BĀGH.
On Stone by Major Parlby.
Sketched on the Spot by فاني پارکس
“There is no virtue greater than a chaste woman burning herself with her husband:” the term Sŭtēē, here rendered “chaste” is thus explained; “commiserating with her husband in trouble, rejoicing in his joys, neglecting herself when he is gone from home, and dying at his death.”
“By the favour of a chaste woman the universe is preserved, on which account she is to be regarded by kings and people as a goddess.”
“If the husband be out of the country when he dies, let the virtuous wife take his slippers (or any thing else which belongs to his dress) and binding them, or it, on her breast, after purification, enter a separate fire.”
Mothers collect the cowries strewn by a sŭtēē as she walks round the pile, ere she fires it, and hang them round the necks of their sick children as a cure for disease.
In the plate entitled “[Superstitions of the Natives],” fig. 3 represents the cowrie shells. (Cypræa moneta.)
The suttee took place on the banks of the Ganges, under the Bund between the Fort and Raj Ghat, a spot reckoned very holy and fortunate for the performance of the rite.
Several of our friends requested me, in case another suttee occurred, to send them timely notice. Five days afterwards, I was informed that a rānee[38] was to be burned. Accordingly I sent word to all my friends. Eight thousand people were assembled on the suttee-ground, who waited from mid-day to sunset: then a cry arose—“The mem sāhiba sent us here! the mem sāhiba said it was to take place to-day! see, the sun has set, there can now be no suttee!” The people dispersed. My informant told me what he himself believed, and I mystified some 8000 people most unintentionally.