166 THE BURNING OF WIDOWS book iii
the woman had on ; this belongs to them by right, as I have said.
In
the Kingdom of Bengal women are burnt in another manner. A woman in
that country must be very poor if she does not come with the body of
her husband to the bank of the Ganges to wash it after he is dead, and
to bathe herself before being burnt. I have seen them come to the
Ganges more than twenty days' journey, the bodies being by that time
altogether putrid, and emitting an unbearable odour. There was one of
them who came from the north, near the frontiers of the Kingdom of
Bhutan, with the body of her husband which she had conveyed in a
carriage, and travelled all the way on foot herself, without eating for
fifteen or sixteen days, till she arrived at the Ganges, where after
washing the body of her husband, which stank horribly, and bathing
herself also, she had herself burnt with him with a determination
which surprised those who saw it. I was there at the time. As
throughout the course of the Ganges, and also in all Bengal, there is
but little fuel,1 these poor women send to beg for wood out
of charity to burn themselves with the dead bodies of their husbands. A
funeral pile is prepared for them, which is like a bed, with its pillow
of small wood and reeds, in which pots of oil and other drugs are
placed in order to consume the body quickly. The woman who intends to
burn herself, preceded by drums, flutes, and hautboys, and adorned
with her most beautiful jewels, comes dancing to the funeral pile, and
ascending it she places herself, half-lying, half-seated. Then the body
of her husband is laid across her, and all the relatives and friends
bring her, one a letter, another a piece of cloth, this one flowers,
that one pieces of silver or copper, asking her to give this from me to
my mother, or to my brother, or to some relative or friend, whoever the
dead person may be whom they have most loved while alive. When the
woman sees that they bring her nothing more, she asks those present
three times whether they have any more commissions for her, and if they
do not reply she wraps all they have brought in a
1
This remark is of interest as showing that the scarcity of fuel, which
is now so much felt, had already been experienced in these regions.
