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.
TEMPLE OF BHAWĀNĪ AND SUTTEES, ALOPEE BAGH.
In Alopee Bagh, in the centre of a large plantation of mango-trees, is a small temple dedicated to Bhawānī; there is no image in it, merely a raised altar, on which victims were, I suppose, formerly sacrificed. Each of the small buildings on the right contains the ashes of a suttee; there are seven suttee-graves of masonry on this, and six of earth on the other side, near the temple, in the mango tope. The largest suttee-tomb contains the ashes of a woman who was burnt in 1825, i.e. six years ago. The ashes are always buried near a temple sacred to Bhāwanī, and never by any other. Families too poor to raise a tomb of masonry in memory of the burnt-sacrifice, are contented to raise a mound of earth, and place a kulsa of red earthenware to mark the spot. In the sketch of “[The Kulsas][39],” Fig. 8 is one of this description, which I carried away from these suttee-mounds.