Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/285

 RELIGION OF BALI. 24- 1 tions of food, — seclusion from the society of man- kind in caves and forests, — and sometimes, but not very frequently, in celibacy. Of the Hindu customs which obtain among the Balinese, the only one of which the certainty has been long ascertained among foreigners, is the sacrifice of the widow on the funeral pile of the husband. In Bali this practice is carried to an excess unknown even to India itself. When a wife oiTers herself, the sacrifice is termed Satya ; when a concubine, slave, or other domestic, Bela, or retaliation. A woman of any cast may sacrifice her- self in this manner, but it is most frequent with those of the military and mercantile classes. It very seldom happens that a woman of the servile class thus sacrifices herself; and, what is more extraor- dinary, one of the sacred order never does. The sacrifice is confined, as far as I could learn, to the occasion of the death of princes and persons of high rank. Perhaps the most remarkable circumstance connected with these sacrifices in Bali is the in- credible number of persons who devote them- selves. The Raja of Blelling siat d to me, that, when the body of his father, the chief of the fa- mily of Karangasam, was burnt, seventy -four women sacrificed themselves along with it. In the year 1813 twenty w^omen sacrificed them- selves on the funeral pile of Wayahan Jalanteg^ VOL. II. Q