The causes which inspire Hindoo women with this desperate resolution, are, I imagine, the following:
In the first place; as the wife has, from her earliest infancy, been betrothed in marriage to her husband, and from that time has never been permitted to see another man; as she is instructed to believe that he is perfectly accomplished, and taught to respect and honour him; as, after consummation, she is shut up from the company, conversation, and even the sight of other men, with still greater care, if possible, than before, being now debarred from seeing even the father or elder brother of her husband, the bonds of her affection must needs be inconceivably strong and indissoluble. To an European lady the zenana naturally appears in the light of an horrible prison: but the daughters of Asia never consider confinement to the zenana as any hardship. They consider it as a condition of their existence, and they enjoy all the happiness of which they have any conception; their whole desires being concentered and fixed on their husband, their food, jewels, and female attendants.
In the second place, if the wife survive her husband, she cannot marry again, and is treated as an inferior person, and an outcast from her family. Nay, she is obliged, in her mournful and hopeless widowhood, to perform all the offices of a menial servant.
In the third place, she is flattered with the idea of having immortalized her name, and aggrandized her children, and her own and husbands families.
Lastly, she is rendered insensible to the pains and horrors of what she is to suffer, by those intoxicating perfumes and mixtures which are administered to her after she has declared her final and unalterable resolution—I say her final resolution, because one or two declarations, of an intention to die with her husband, is not sufficient.
The strength of her resolution undergoes a probation. There is a certain time prescribed by the Gentoo law, during which her family and friends exert their utmost influence in order to dissuade her from burning; and if she persist in her resolution to the end of that period, it is not lawful to use any more persuasions with her, to abandon it. If she should alter her purpose after that period, she would be punished with the loss of all castes, and live in a state of the most complete misery and contempt. Nay, if an European or Christian does but touch her very garment with his finger, when she is going to the pile, an immediate stop is put to the ceremony, she is forced to live an outcast from her family, and from the Gentoo religion.
You will doubtless, my friend, have curiosity to know, in what manner, after all their stimulatives to perseverance, the tender sex, among a soft and effeminate people, sustains the near approach, of a scene so full of awe and horror. Amidst her weeping relations and friends, the voluntary victim to love and honor alone appears serene and undaunted. A gentle smile is diffused over her countenance: she walks upright, with an easy but firm step; talks to those around her of the virtues of the deceased, and of the joy with which she will be transported when her shade shall meet with his; and encourages her sorrowful attendants to bear with fortitude the sight of those momentary sufferings which she herself is going to feel.—Having ascended the funeral pile, she lays herself down by the body of her husband, which she fervently embraces. A dose of narcotic mixtures is then administered for the last time; and instantly the person, whose office it is, sets fire to the pile.
Thus the most determined resolution of which we can form any conception, is found in the weaker sex, and in the soft climes of Asia. It is to the honour of that sex and those climes, that the greatest courage they exhibit, is the effect, not of the furious impulses of rage and revenge, but conscious dignity and love.
It might naturally be imagined by an European, that the several wives of one man (for polygamy is general throughout all Asia) would regard one another with mutual jealousy and aversion: and that they in reality do, has been asserted by writers of high reputation. The fact however is quite otherwise: they visit one another with great friendship and cordiality; and if they are of the same caste, will occasionally eat together.—The husband is restrained from eating with his wives, either by a regard to custom; or, as I have been informed by some of the Gentoos themselves, by a precept of their religion.
Notwithstanding the extreme antiquity of most Indian nations, I am told that in India beyond the Ganges, on the confines of Aracan and Pegu, there is a people (if solitary savages roaming through woods in quest of prey, deserve the name of people) that appear to be in the very first stage of society. They are the only people in the known world that go absolutely naked, without the smallest covering on any part of their bodies. They live on fruit, which grows spontaneously, in the uncultivated deserts they inhabit, in great abundance; and on the flesh of animals, which they tear alive and devour. They sit on their hams, with their legs and arms disposed in the manner of monkeys. At the approach of men, they fly into their woods. They take care of their offspring, and live in families, but seem to have no ideas of subordination of rank or civil government. I have never had occasion to see this race of mortals myself, but I have conversed with several persons who have seen them; all of whom concur in the general account of them, which I have now given you.