Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/128

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96
THE PRACTICE OF SUTTEE

ing to compare with the accounts, given above, by the Greek writers of nearly two thousand years before. It reads as follows: –

'Although the ancient and barbarous custom which imposes on widows the duty of sacrificing themselves voluntarily on the funeral pyre of their husbands has not been expressly abolished, it is much more rare nowadays than formerly, especially in the southern parts of the Peninsula. In the north of India and in the provinces bordering on the Ganges, however, women are only too frequently seen offering themselves as victims of this terrible superstition, and, either through motives of vanity or through a spirit of blind enthusiasm, giving themselves up to a death which is as cruel as it is foolish.

A GROUP OF CHILD WIDOWS.

The Mohammedan rulers never tolerated this horrible practice in the provinces subject to them; but, notwithstanding their prohibition, wretched fanatics have more than once succeeded in bribing the subordinate representatives of authority to give permission

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