I had also the good luck to meet, at Tanjore, Mr. Buchanan, a very near connection of mine, for whom I had long entertained a sincere and warm regard. It has been my misfortune to have been obliged frequently to censure some of my relatives for ill-nature and ingratitude: I never did so without the most painful sensations. When, on the contrary, I am enabled to speak to their honour, I feel a proportionate share of pleasure: I am therefore happy in mentioning Mr. Buchanan as a man as amiable in his private as respectable in his public character; but the satisfaction I felt at this meeting was much alloyed by finding him in a very bad state of health.
Before I left Tanjore, I had an opportunity of being eye-witness to that extraordinary and horrid ceremony, the burning of a Gentoo woman with the body of her husband. As this is a point which has occasioned much speculation and some doubt among Europeans, I inclose you an accurate account of the ceremony, as minuted down at the time it happened.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CEREMONY OF THE GENTOO WOMEN BURNING THEMSELVES WITH THE BODIES OF THEIR HUSBANDS.
“This day, ——————, I went to see a Gentoo woman resign herself to be burned along with the corpse of her deceased husband.
“The place fixed upon for this tragic scene, was a small islet on the bank of one of the branches of the river Cavery, about a mile to the Northward of the fort of Tanjore.
“When I came to the spot, I found the victim, who appeared, to be not above sixteen, sitting on the ground, dressed in the Gentoo manner, with a white cloth wrapped round her, some white flowers like jessamins hanging round her neck, and some of them hanging from her hair. There were about twenty women sitting on their hams round her, holding a white handkerchief, extended horizontally over her head, to shade her from the sun, which was excessively hot, it being then about noon.
“At about twenty yards from where she was sitting, and facing her, there were several Bramins busy in constructing a pile with billets of fire-wood: the pile was about eight feet long, and four broad. They first began by driving some upright stakes into the ground, and then built up the middle to about the height of three feet and a half with billets of wood.
“The dead husband, who, from his appearance, seemed to be about sixty years of age, was lying close by, stretched out on a bier, made of Bamboo canes. Four Bramins walked in procession three times round the dead body, first in a direction contrary to the sun, and afterwards other three times in a direction with the sun, all the while muttering incantations; and at each round or circuit they made, they untwisted, and immediately again twisted up the small long lock of hair which is left unshaven at the back of their heads.
“Some other Bramins were in the mean time employed in sprinkling water out of a green leaf, rolled up like a cup, upon a small heap of cakes of dry cow-dung, with which the pile was afterwards to be set on fire.
“An old Bramin sat at the North-east corner of the pile upon his hams, with a pair of spectacles on, reading, I suppose, the Shaster, or their Scriptures, from a book composed of Cajan leaves.