Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/483

Rh dwarf foot-page, his horse and saddle; Brynhild lies on the pile by her beloved Sigurd, and men and maids follow after them on the hell-way. The Gauls in Cæsar's time burned at the dead man's sumptuous funeral whatever was dear to him, animals also, and much-loved slaves and clients. Old mentions of Slavonic heathendom describe the burning of the dead with clothing and weapons, horses and hounds, with faithful servants, and above all, with wives. Thus St. Boniface says that 'the Wends keep matrimonial love with so great zeal, that the wife may refuse to survive her husband, and she is held praiseworthy among women who slays herself by her own hand, that she may be burnt on one pyre with her lord.' This Aryan rite of widow-sacrifice has not only an ethnographic and antiquarian interest, but even a place in modern politics. In Brahmanic India the widow of a Hindu of the Brahman or the Kshatriya caste was burnt on the funeral pile with her husband, as a satî or 'good woman,' which word has passed into English as suttee. Mentioned in classic and mediæval times, the practice was in full vigour at the beginning of the last century. Often one dead husband took many wives with him. Some went willingly and gaily to the new life, many were driven by force of custom, by fear of disgrace, by family persuasion, by priestly threats and promises, by sheer violence. When the rite was suppressed under modern British rule, the priesthood resisted to the uttermost, appealing to the Veda, as sanctioning the ordinance, and demanding that the foreign rulers should respect it. Yet in fact, as Prof. H. H. Wilson proved, the priests had actually falsified their sacred Veda in support of a rite enjoined by long and inveterate prejudice, but not by the traditional standards of Hindu faith. The ancient