Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 3.djvu/229

 MAN KOUR. (164)

AN KOUR is a Hindoo widow, of about twenty-five years of age, by caste Brahmin, and a resident of Hurdwar, chiefly living on the charity given her by the visitors. High caste Hindoo women do not re-marry, and many of them end their days at Hurdwar, which they consider a specially holy place. Her dress is a red petticoat and green sheet. Complexion fair, eyes black, height four feet nine inches. It is evident that Man Kour has not given up the world as it was incumbent on her as a Brahmin widow to do, if she followed the strict practices of her people. She has not had her hair shaved off, and she still wears the pote, or bead necklace, round her throat, which was tied there as part of the marriage ceremony. She has earrings, and a gold ornament round her neck, and her clothes are of gay colours. All this is strictly indecorous as a Brahmin widow of any pretension to respectable character: as one she should have divested herself of all ornaments, kept her head shaved, and worn white garments only. Such at least has been the old custom, as the desire of virtuous women to make themselves unlovely in the eyes of men, to mortify the flesh, and live in communion with their husband's spirit till reunited to him in Paradise. Before the British rule, this spirit would have impelled the widow to become Suttee; she would have gloried in such a proof of her devotion and her faith, though in many cases widows have, no doubt, been impelled to it by designing Brahmins, or on points of family honour. The rite was not confined to Brahmins. Rajpoots, Mahrattas, and even Sudras of comparatively low caste, practised it. When Sukwar Bye, the wife of Shao, Rajah of the Mahrattas, who, at her husband's death, was plotting the exteiinination of the power of the Peshwas, received a sneering message from Ballajee Rao Peshwah, who had detected her plot, "that he hoped she would not think of burning herself with her husband's body"—the unhappy lady forthwith consummated the sacrifice. It is due to the Mahratta nation, however, to state, that this message, as well as the Peshwah's promise to her brother to grant him an estate provided his sister, "for the honour of her family," should become Suttee, was held then, and is still held, in detestation. Such, no doubt, has been the secret history of thousands of similar sad sacrifices among all classes in India. Pride, angry feelings towards relatives, dread (^f future ill-treatment, -weakness, and even temporary intoxication, have incited women of excitable minds to become Suttee; while, on the other hand, higher and purer motives have no doubt prevailed, aided