direction. Rámdhan Misra's father had died that morning, and the peculiar beat of the drum, to which we have alluded, announced to the inhabitants of the village that his wife, or rather widow, had resolved to burn herself on the same funeral pile with her husband. Govinda entered the house with difficulty, as it was filled with a large crowd. In the middle of the court-yard of the house he saw Rámdhan's mother sitting surrounded by a great many women. Far from weeping on account of the death of her husband, she was every now and then laughing, and seemed to be the gayest of the gay. She looked clean and bathed; the nails of her fingers and toes had been pared off by a female barber, and the sides of her feet, as well as the tips of her toes, had been painted red with the alakta; she was dressed in a suit of new clothes, or rather in a new sáți; she was dazzling in ornaments in all parts of her body; her forehead was painted red with vermilion; her lips were red with the paint of catechu and lime in the pán which she was chewing; and she waved in her hand a small twig of the mango tree with leaves; altogether, she looked not as a widow mourning for her deceased partner, but "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." The dead body of her husband had been already carried to the place of cremation, and she was about to follow thither. As she walked through the streetsfor the burning place was in the outskirts of the village-she said to the hundreds of men and women who had flocked to see her, that that was the day of her marriage, the happiest day of her life; and she raised the well-known marriage shout, ulu! ulu! ulu! There was not a single person in the village, male or female, who did not look upon her with the utmost reverence. They called her satí, or the Chaste One, by way of eminence, as her conjugal fidelity was such that she was following her husband into the invisible world. They compared her to Sávitri-the ideal of a Hindu wife, and praised her for her extraordinary piety, her conjugal faithfulness, and her heroic fortitude. As the procession went on, exclamations of ulu! ulu! ulu! Hari bol! Hari bol! Hari bol! rent the air; and the deafening tom-toms kept time with those sounds. At last the procession reached the side of the tank, where the pile had been prepared, on which the body of the deceased had been already laid. The pile was between seven and eight feet long, about four broad, and three high. There was a goodly array of faggots and flax; a pot filled with clarified butter was also there. The satí now took off the ornaments from her body, and distributed them amongst her friends and relations, who were standing around her; and she threw among the crowd handfuls of fried paddy (khadi), and shells (kadi), which she had with her. Great was the scramble among the crowd for the fried paddy and the shells, for it was believed that they had the singular property of miraculously healing all sorts of diseases. Mothers not unfrequently tied one or two of these shells round the necks of their children as a charm against all disease. Govinda was fortunate enough to get one of these shells, which he careShe next fully secured in a corner of his dhuti. went through the ceremony of pradakshin, that is, she went seven times round the pile on which the body of her deceased husband had been laid, scattering about her all the time fried paddy and shells. Circumambulation over, she went up to the pile with unfaltering steps, and laid herself down beside the body of her deceased husband. The living and the dead were now tied together by strong ropes, and faggots were heaped upon them. A death-like stillness followed. Rámdhan, the son of the living and the dead, now approached the pile with a lighted faggot in his hand, to discharge the last offices of filial affection prescribed in the holy books. With averted eyes he applied the faggot to the mouth of his deceased father, and to the pile. The pile blazed up in a moment, and the women and other relations of the deceased set up a loud scream. As the flame reached the sati's body, she shrieked; but the drums were beat in full chorus, to drown the cries of the unhappy woman. More faggots were applied, and quantities of ghi, or clarified butter, were poured upon them to aid the combustion. screams. But lo! the satí has disengaged herself from the ropes by which she had been tied. She sits up. She stretches out her hands imploringly. She She attempts to escape. The intoxication of superstition had hitherto kept her up, but she now gives way to nature. But in vain. The drums are now beat at their loudest; deafening shouts of Hari bol! Hari bol! pierce the skies; and by means of two bamboos, which were kept in readiness, the satí is prevented from getting down. It is all over with her. She has fallen a victim to grim superstition. More faggots and ghi were had in requisition till the bodies were quite consumed. What Govinda felt on witnessing this shocking scene I know not, for he has left no record of his thoughts; but it is not too much to assert that there was not a single man or woman in all Kánchanpur who felt that there was anything wrong in that dreadful act of self-murder; on the contrary, all regarded it as an act of the highest piety, and looked upon the unfortunate victim of Bráhmanical superstition as an especial favourite of Heaven. This was the last time when the satí rite was performed at Kánchanpur, for in a few months after this event, Lord William Bentinck, one of the most beneficent of rulers that ever wielded the destinies of an empire, had the moral courage to enact, on 4th December, 1829, that law which for ever put a stop to that murderous practice. CHAPTER XIX. EVENINGS AT HOME. I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Hamlet. I FORGET whether I told the English reader-for the Bengali reader does not require to be told it-that in the village of Kánchanpur there was no such thing as a tavern. There was, indeed, a grog shop in the outskirts of the village, where spirits distilled from rice were sold, but it was resorted to only by the lowest people, like háḍis and doms, people much lower in social status than the agricultural class to which Badan belonged. Besides, in the grog shop no company could be had; people went there merely for drink, and after getting what they wanted, they returned to their homes. Badan and any member of his family would no more think of drinking spirits or wine than of committing murder—the former habit being reckoned almost as heinous a crime as the latter. Badan, Kálamánik, and Gayárám, therefore, generally spent their evenings at home; only now and then they visited their friends. In the summer months, beginning in February and ending about the middle of June, after returning from their day's work |