Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/394

384 led to the possession of the only reliable statistics that we have upon the subject. From these the rest must be inferred. The cruel custom has been almost restricted to the affluent and higher orders, as the poor are unable to bear the expense; so that it has been the most exalted, wealthy, and beautiful ladies of the land who have thus been immolated.

From statistics obtained by the magistrates of the district around Calcutta prior to 1829, a published list gives fifty-four cases in the months of May and June, 1812, where sixty-nine women, of ages from sixteen to sixty, were burned with these fifty-four dead bodies; leaving altogether one hundred and eighty-one children, who were, as in all such cases, thus deprived of both parents at once. Another list for the region within thirty miles of Calcutta, gives two hundred and seventy-five known cases for the year 1803. In the Bengal presidency, in the year 1817, there were seven hundred and six cases recorded—nearly two each day for that part of India alone. In ten years, from 1815 to 1825, these lists, for the localities where English magistrates took note of suttees, show that five thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven widows were thus immolated. These are only the more public instances coming to the knowledge of the magistrates within the limited portion of India then directly ruled by England. But what of those of all the rest of the country, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin? And, if they could be numbered and known, then, to obtain the sum total, you have to multiply them by the two thousand five hundred years during which these unwarranted and fiendish cruelties have been practiced on gentle women before the face of heaven in India! The blood of these millions of women has been crying to God from the ground all that time, against the Brahmins of Hindustan.

The origin of suttee, some have supposed, might be found in the cruel jealousy of husbands, reaching thus beyond the grave; while others refer it to the tradition that it was adopted as an expedient for the preservation of men's lives. Doctor Chever, in his recent work on Indian Medical Jurisprudence, traces the custom to this origin. He brings forward authorities to show that the Brahmins