Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/126

 94 THE PRACTICE OF SUTTEE possessions, and who must give them maintenance, for that they were so frail in their love for their husband that they would not die with him. Since the husbands, when death is nigh, urge their wives to die with them, either by being burnt or buried alive, and since we have seen in what fashion the burn- ing taketh place, some may readily be eager to know how matters go when a wife is buried alive with her dead husband. To satisfy the curious herein, I shall also relate the fashion which the heathen have in the burying of these wives; the which I have not from hearsay, like the foregoing, but I myself have seen it there. The preparations for the burning and the burying of the wives are one and the same, the difference is only in the burying itself. When the wife hath bathed in the pool, in manner as the wives who be burnt, then fareth she with pipes, drums, bassoons, and such like tokens of joy, to the melancholy pit which is digged for her, where she findeth her dead husband. This pit is digged and made in fashion as a cellar; it hath an arch of earth, and is also entered by stairs. The wife who is to be buried goeth along the stairs aforesaid into the pit, and findeth there, under the arch, a bench, also of earth, whereon she sitteth and taketh, after that she hath sat down, her dead husband in her arms; and then taketh she a pot with fire, wherein she casteth some incense and burneth incense over her dead husband therewith. This being done, they begin softly to fill the pit,