Page:Sketches of some distinguished Indian women.djvu/15

Rh and elaborate rules of conduct for all classes of people, and particularly lays down how a woman is to live after the death of her husband.

It seems, however, to have been introduced by the Brahmans for some reason not easy to discover, and by lapse of time and the force of public opinion, it gathered the strength which always attaches to an immemorial custom.

M. Thevenot, a French traveller who visited India in 1669, found this practice of suttee very prevalent, and writes thus of it:—"The Indian widows have a far different fate from that of their husbands; they dare not marry again, but are obliged, if they will not burn themselves, to live in perpetual widowhood; but then they live wretchedly, for they incur the contempt of their family and caste as being afraid of death." After describing the ceremonies usually observed at the burning of widows, the same traveller goes on to say:—"The women are happy that the Mahometans are become the masters in the Indies, to deliver them from the tyranny of the Brahmins, who always desire their death, because these ladies being never burnt without all their ornaments of gold and silver about them, and none but they having power to touch their ashes, they fail not to pick up all that is precious among them. However, the Great Mogul and other Mahometan Princes having ordered their governors