Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/403

Rh then walked deliberately and steadily to the brink, stepped into the center of the flame, sat down, and leaning back in the midst, as if reposing upon a couch, was consumed, without uttering a shriek or betraying one sign of agony!”

In another part of the country a most affecting instance occurred. A young princess named Mutcha Bae lost first her son and then her husband. She resolved upon being burned with the corpse of the latter, and met the remonstrance of her own mother, the excellent Alia Bae, who begged that she might not be left thus alone and desolate in the world, by saying, “You are old, mother, and a few years will terminate your pious life. My husband and my only child are gone, and when you follow, life, I feel, will be insupportable, and the opportunity of closing it with honor will then have passed.” Nothing could alter her purpose; and the royal mother, finding she could not prevail on her child to consent to live, resolved to witness her beloved daughter's suttee. She joined the cruel procession and stood close to the pile: two Brahmins held her by the arms. She bore it all till the flames rose round her beautiful child, when she lost all her self-control; she shrieked with anguish, while the crowd shouted; and her hands, which she could not liberate, she actually gnawed in agony. By great effort she so far regained her self-possession as, after the bodies were consumed, to join in the ceremony of bathing in the Nerbudda. Then she retired to her palace, and for three days she fasted in her deep grief, never uttering a word. She subsequently sought relief in erecting a beautiful monument to the memory of the dear departed. Such monuments, the tombs of suttees, varying in size and form, yet generally pyramidal, are seen along the banks of the different sacred rivers.

At length this terrible crime, which the edicts and energy of such emperors as Akbar and Aurungzebe could not restrain, trembled before the cross of Christ. The Protestant missionary entered India, and stood up to “plead for the widow.” Before the blessed Name which he invoked, the demon of suttee feared and fled from British India. What Veda, and Shaster, and Menu,