Her Bangles, Necklaces And Rings Are Broken To Pieces And
Burned, Together With Her Hair And Her Husband's Remains.
During
the rest of her life she must wear nothing but white if she was
less than twenty-five at her husband's death, and red if she was
older.
Temples, religious ceremonies, society, are closed to her
for ever. She has no right to speak to any of her relations, and
no right to eat with them. She sleeps, eats and works separately;
her touch is considered impure for seven years. If a man, going
out on business, meets a widow, he goes home again, abandoning
every pursuit, because to see a widow is accounted an evil omen.
In the past all this was seldom practised, and concerned only
the rich widows, who refused to be burned; but now, since the
Brahmans have been caught in the false interpretation of the Vedas,
with the criminal intention of appropriating the widows' wealth,
they insist on the fulfilment of this cruel precept, and make what
once was the exception the rule. They are powerless against
British law, and so they revenge themselves on the innocent and
helpless women, whom fate has deprived of their natural protectors.
Professor Wilson's demonstration of the means by which the Brahmans
distorted the sense of the Vedas, in order to justify the practice
of widow-burning, is well worth mentioning. During the many
centuries that this terrible practice prevailed, the Brahmans
had appealed to a certain Vedic text for their justification,
and had claimed to be rigidly fulfilling the institutes of Manu,
which contain for them the interpretation of Vedic law. When
the East India Company's Government first turned its attention
to the suppression of suttee, the whole country, from Cape Comorin
to the Himalayas, rose in protest, under the influence of the
Brahmans. "The English promised not to interfere in our religious
affairs, and they must keep their word!" was the general outcry.
Never was India so near revolution as in those days. The English
saw the danger and gave up the task. But Professor Wilson, the
best Sanskritist of the time, did not consider the battle lost.
He applied himself to the study of the most ancient MSS., and
gradually became convinced that the alleged precept did not exist
in the Vedas; though in the Laws of Manu it was quite distinct,
and had been translated accordingly by T. Colebrooke and other
Orientalists. An attempt to prove to the fanatic population that
Manu's interpretation was wrong would have been equivalent to an
attempt to reduce water to powder. So Wilson set himself to
study Manu, and to compare the text of the Vedas with the text
of this law-giver. This was the result of his labors: the Rig
Veda orders the Brahman to place the widow side by side with the
corpse, and then, after the performance of certain rites, to lead
her down from the funeral pyre and to sing the following verse
from Grhya Sutra:
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