Page:Twelve men of Bengal in the nineteenth century (1910).djvu/29

Rh givers expressly enjoined that a widow should live as an ascetic and should 'continue till death forgiving all injuries, performing honest duties, avoiding every sensual pleasure and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of virtue.'

Not content with combating the evil from the comfortable vantage of his desk, he was wont constantly to go to the Calcutta burning ground and attempt by personal persuasion upon both the victim and her friends to prevent the Sati. It has often been the practice to tie the victim down upon the funeral pyre so that escape was impossible, but Ram Mohan insisted that the pyre should first be lighted so that the widow might voluntarily enter the flames if she so desired, quoting certain passages in the Shastras that required this to be done. His hope that the sight of the flames might turn the widow from her intentions was often fulfilled though in other cases, the fear of the priests and the exhortations of her own relatives or promises of reward in the life to come, drove her to self-immolation. Finally, disheartened at the slow progress of his campaign, Ram Mohan organised a petition to the Governor-General which was signed by a great number of the most respectable inhabitants of Calcutta. 'Your petitioners are fully aware from their own knowledge,' it ran, 'or from the authority of credible eye-witnesses that cases have frequently occurred where women have been induced by the