The wives may first ascend unto the altar.”
The wife of the deceased is then summoned away the last:
“Go up unto the world of life, O woman!
Thou liest by one whose soul is fled; come hither!
To him who grasps thy hand, a second husband,
Thou art as wife to spouse become related.”
In commenting upon this hymn, Prof. Whitney notes its “discordance with the modern Hindu practice of immolating the widow at the grave of her husband,” and adds: “Nothing could be more explicit than the testimony of this hymn against the antiquity of the practice. It finds, indeed, no support anywhere in the Vedic scriptures.” And now we come to the “various reading,” for Prof. Whitney concludes the passage with this statement: “Authority has been sought, however, for the practice, in a fragment of this very hymn, rent from its natural connection, and a little altered; by the change of a single letter, the line which is translated above, ‘The wives may first ascend unto the altar,’ has been made to read, ‘The wives shall go up into the place of the fire.’ ”
We heartily welcome this work of Prof. Whitney, and thank him for it as a solid contribution to literature and to philological science, honorable to himself, and reflecting credit on American scholarship.