OLD TRADITION

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 41, 18 February 1930, Page 18

OLD TRADITION

SUTTEE IN INDIA

EXALTATION OF THE RITE

December 7, a hundred years ago, lair a peon, resplendent in. the Gov-ernor-General's livery, climb the verandah steps of the Rev. William Carey, the great Baptist missionary, writes Edward Thompson in the "Observer" (London). He salaamed and handed over a document, -whoso perusal roused the missionary to uncontrollable excitement. It was the Edict; abolishing widow-burning in Bengal, ■with Lord. William-Bentinck's request that Mr. Carey translate it without delay. Mr. Carey did. It was Sunday., but all obligations of the day were swept aside, and hour's delay might mean a life sacrificed. •; Sahamarana, "dying in company with," was a rite once almost universal. There is one tomb at Luxor which still keeps the body of an Egyptian king where it was laid; .your guide switches on an electric light, and shows four embalmed wives in an adjoining chamber. Mr. Woolley has uncovered the awful funeral honours paid to ancient Sumerian 'kings. Greek and Nourse legend alike keep memory \pf a time when the queen accompanied her lord into the next world. From America, China, Bussia, the South Sea Islands, evidence comes of the same custom. Yet the Aryans, entering India, had almost certainly abandoned it. ■■ ' . ' '■, How it entered Hinduism is, matter of conjecture. Most likely widowburning was indigenous, .especially in that tract of wild hill and forest and t ■wilder belief which divides Northern India-from the Peninsula, and entered the. Vedic religion with so much else that had its home here. TEARS OF VACILLATION. A suttee witnessed by Alexander's ioidiers "stirred pity in some," "in some excess of eulogy," while others "reprobated such rites as barbarous and cruel." The Mogul emperors strove to suppress it. The earliest British officials, bound to a policy of uon-in-torference in religious practices, were slow to act. But the volume of protest grew after William Carey, by establishing round Calcutta a ring of native watchers, proved to the Gover-nor-General in 1805, the shocking prevalence ofr -widow-burning in Bengal. Over twenty years of vacillation ensued. Individual officers illegally for,bade suttee; but the Government felt entitled only to regulate it and to insjst on official sanction. It is not strange that this should have been interpreted as protection; the . suttees officially reported in Bengal rose from 378 in 1815 to 839 in 1818. But in England increasing horror was felt, and in the Hindu community also that brave spirit^ Rammohan Roy, aroused a conscience. When at length Lord William Bentinek acted, freeing Bengal, and, six months later, Madras and Bombay Presidencies also,' jmutiny in the native army and rebellion were predicted, and the Hindus of Calcutta sent an appeal against prohibition to the Privy Council, with over 800 signatures. But the abolition was upheld. ■ Coming to times almost within living memory, with. Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler four queens and eleven slave girls_died. We have the accounts of European eye witnesses, who tell how, before each queen a. man walked backward, holding a\ mirror .in which the lady might -watch her countenance. In April, ,1844, 310 women burned with Suchet Singh, who was killed in an attempt to win the Sikh headship. Twenty months later, war broke , out with the British; a regency followed defeat, and suttee was abolished1 in the Punjab. But it continued in the Rajput States until 1861, when,a slave girl, after the queens had all refused was persuaded to- burn with Maharana Sarup Singh. The Central Government. made, it clear that it would not tolerate such an event again, and nil later suttees must be considered illegal.' ILLEGAL SUTTEES. In British India, too, illegal suttees occur from time to time. • Women, as proved by abundant first-hand testimony, have died not only shrinkingly and wretchedly, butjwitb. a gallant exaltation that is among the most moving things in human records. It is not strange that Hindus cherish their memory. When a suttee takes place the community is passionately stirred. No Hindu jury will convict the abettors of the deed, and these have to be punished by the high-handed action of the English judge, or of the nigher court to which appeal is made. In November, 1927, the native police in a little village in Bihar were restrained by an enormous crowd, while a -widow mounted her husband's pyre. She leapt out when she felt the flames, and into the river. But though she was rescued, no doctor -was allowed to attend her burns during the two days ghe took to die, days in which thousands of excited worshippers were brought to her by motor-bus. Not a single witness, other than the police, would speak to facts that were notorious. A board of assessors, consisting of three college professors, a schoolmaster, 'and an educated landowner, found the accused all not guilty, and when the latter -were sentenced to terms of imprisonment the sentences sent a wave of indignation through the province. So deeply is the satis' sacrifice cherished, and so hard does the tradition die!