Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/91

Rh is gone; come to the world of the living, away from thy husband, and become the wife of him who holds thy hand and is willing to marry thee."

It is with pain and regret that we refer to another passage belonging to the same hymn in the tenth book from which this last verse is cited. The passage in question may be thus translated:—

"May these women not suffer the pangs of widowhood. May they who have good and desirable husbands enter their houses with collyrium and butter. Let these women, without shedding tears and without any sorrow, first proceed to the house, wearing valuable ornaments." In itself this verse is perfectly harmless, yet by the change in it of agre ("first") to agneh ("of the fire") sanction was found in later times for the institution of suttee, or the burning of the widow on the pyre of her husband, though in the original form of the stanza—and this cannot be too strongly emphasized—the cruelest of all Hindu institutions finds no support whatever.