Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/1022

 976 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE, [ Chap. unimpeachable and pure widowhood of woman'‘in accordance with the rules of Brahmacharyya after the death of her husband, over the practice that largely prevailed in his time of self immolation, against which he fought, in conjunction with Euro- pean clergymen and officials. Like other reforms this was also proposed and carried out at the teeth of great opposition. While alluding to the controversal literature that sprang up in connection with this movement, we propose to take a dispassionate view of the history of Suttee in Bengal. It isan usage which was pre- valent amongst the ancients. The rite was practised in early times amongst the Thracians, the Gete, and the Scythians. Diodorus wrote in B. C. 44 and he describes it to have occurred in the army of Eumenes, upwards of 300 years before the Christian era (Diodorus Siculus lib XIX, Chapter II.) The Danish Northmen of Europe retained the recollec- tions of Suttee in the story of Balder, one of the sons of Odin.* The custom grew in India as a natural result of the peculiarly organised social institutions of the Hindus. It has been more than once observed in the foregoing chapters that the Hindus aspire to a realisation of God through the various domestic ties which bind them to their homes. Without this value given to domestic virtues which was the main basis of the [ndo-Aryan civilisation, their joint-family system could not have stood. It is the call of home that has always made Hindus
 * The Cyclopedia of India by Balfour, P. 781.