Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/127

without throwing in the earth unmannerly and without harming the woman. The wife, like as I have seen, herself scrapeth the earth about her body. When, now, the earth beginneth to come about her neck, then two of them that fill the pit with earth take a cloth, the which they hold before the mouth of the pit, that what they do may not be clearly seen of any, and that the women may not take affright. When, now, they hold the cloth before the pit, they give the wife somewhat in a shell; the which when I asked of the heathen that stood by what it was, they said that it was poison. The which I also saw to be true, for in the woman's face straightway a great change might be perceived. The poison being given her, then break they the woman's neck. But all this is done so dextrously behind a cloth that no one can see it, even though he press right close to the pit. I ween that they do this concerning the woman to make short her pain and anguish. And in this fashion goeth it in the burial of wives.'

Still more detailed and impressive is the account of the sacrifice of widows given by Abbé Dubois, a French missionary of Madras in Southern India between the years 1792 and 1823, who describes a suttee from actual experience and repeats the accounts of eye-witnesses who were present when two queens perished in the flames of the funeral pyre of the King of Tanjore. The abbé's graphic description of the scene of these gem-decked victims going or being led to self-immolation upon the fiery altar of ancient custom is interest-