Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/472

 of the old tree was another satī mound, and small lotās, earthen drinking vessels, were hung around the tree to receive the offerings of the devout. I had the curiosity to put my hand into one of them, and found one betel-nut which had been placed there as an offering. Peeping over a high bank, I saw an open space of ground, on which were some fine trees, and I could scarcely believe the number of mounds that met my eye were those of victimized women. By a little détour I found the entrance to this place of cenotaphs, and was shocked on counting eight-and-twenty satīs. I was alone; had a Hindū been with me, he would have made salām to each of them.

One was large and somewhat in the shape of a grave, after the form of the satī of the Brahmān at Barrah. The others were of various forms; the richer ones were of stone, of an octagonal shape, and surmounted by a dome; some were so small and low, they were not higher than one foot from the earth, like a little ant hill, but ornamented with a kalsā, which quite covered the little mound. Those of stone were from six to eight feet high, and of various forms. There is a hollow space within the satī, into which, through the little arch, the offerings are placed; and there also are deposited the two sīr, as they call them, which are made of stone, and are like a cannon ball split in halves. See the plate of the kalsās, fig. 1. One very old satī tomb, in ruins, stood on the edge of the high cliff above the river, shaded by a clump of bamboos. The spot interested me extremely. It is very horrible to see how the weaker are imposed upon; and it is the same all over the world, civilized or uncivilized—perhaps some of these young married women, from eleven to twenty years of age, were burnt alive, in all the freshness of youth; it may be with the corpse of some decrepit sickly old wretch to whom their parents had given them in marriage.

The laws of England relative to married women, and the state of slavery to which those laws degrade them, render the lives of some few in the higher, and of thousands in the lower ranks of life, one perpetual satī, or burning of the heart, from which they have no refuge but the grave, or the cap of liberty,—i. e. the widow's, and either is a sad consolation.