THE RITE OF JOHUR. An Awful Sacrifice Made by Fanatical Women In Old India. (By a Hindoo in the "Pall Mall Gazette.")

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 189, 29 January 1887, Page 3

THE RITE OF JOHUR. An Awful Sacrifice Made by Fanatical Women In Old India. (By a Hindoo in the " Pall Mall Gazette.")

Ik a Reuters telegram of the 21et of October Ist we read : " A repetition of the Johur ordeal has occurred in a Brahmin village near Neemuch, in Bengal : the objoct being to ayoid the Tonk Durbar assessment. The two victims calmly ascended the funeral pyre, and bravely met death. The villagers afterwards took their charred heads +o Odeypore." Neemuch is a town and British cantonment in the territory of Gwullor, and situaced at a short distance from the boundary separating that tract of country from the State of Odeypore, in Eojpootana. It is just where one would expect the Johur to take place, if anywhere ; for it is essentially a Rajpoot rite, like the sacrifices of widows and infants. The present case is a remarkable one; for Johur, in past history, was never used to avoid assessment, and the telegram does not say whether the victims are male, or female, Johur is an awful rite. A whole tribe may become extinct by it, as is seen by several instances recorded in the history of the Rajpoot states. What it signifies is the burning of women to save their honour. The Rajpoot is profoundly jealous of the honour of his women, and to prevent their falling into the hands of conquerors, then to be dealt with as was often the case in the wars with the Mahometans, he has recourse to the Johur— that is to say, the immolation of every female of the family. And the Rajpoot woman gladly embraces such a refuge from pollution ; or even if she were not in fear of being forced away as a captive, she would prefer it to living on as a widow. The loss of a battle or the capture of a city during the Mahometan invasions was usually the time when the dreadful rite was practised. At the end of tho famed siege of (Jheetore, the ancient capital ot the Rana of Odeypore, by Ala-uddkj, in 1303, the Raj poot chief, after an arduous day, passed the night in pondering the means by which he might save from the general destruction one at leaat of his twelve sons. Eleven of them fell during the next few days, and when but one son remained to the Rana he proclaimed the Johur. The funeral pyre was lighted within subterranean chambers wftyre the sun's rays- had never entered, and the defenders of Cheetore beheld the queens, and their own wives and daughters to the number of several thousands, p«ss in procession to the fire, The beautiful Pudraani, the consort of the Kaua, who was believed to be the chief object of attraction for the conquering Tartar, came la3t in the throng. The door of the caverns closed ; the firoa raged within ; and the honour of thellajpoot wotnon yeas saved. VV hen afterwards Ala-uddin entered the capital on the death of the Rana and his surviving son, who fell in the conflict, he found it strewn with the bodie3 of it? defenders, while smoke ytt issued from the recesses where the women had perished. Again during the second siego of Cheetore by Bahadood, Shah of Gujrat m 1530, when the bravest had fallen in defending the breach caused by his artillery (it was served by Portuguese adventurers) the Johur was proclaimed. There was little time to build the pyre. Combustibles were heaped up in hurriedly-made hollows in the ground, and magazines were placed around them. The mother of the infant prince led the procession of willing victims to their doom, and 13,000 females were thus immolated at once. In the Johur on the occasion of Firoz Shah's attack upon Jessulmir, some year 3 after the event above described, 16,000 females were deatroyod The Johur wae practised not only when the foe was the lusty and bloodthirsty Tartar ; there were also instances of it in the intertribal wars of the Rajpoots. Numerous inscriptions on stone and on brass, according to the archa>ologiots, record as the first token ot victory the captive wives of tho foe, and the law of Mahu with regard to female captives in war is analogous to those of Moses and Mahomel on the same point.