8 Notes of a tour m the Tributary Mehals. [No. 1, 



mill families, up to a recent date ; many of the grandmothers of the 

 present generation of chiefs and Brahmins having so distinguished 

 themselves. One man was pointed out to me as having lost his mother 

 hy the rite of suttee. He would not say ' lost ;' he no doubt regards 

 her as canonized by the act. 



A rather romantic story of a suttee that occurred some fifty years 

 ago in Grangpore is related. 



A Brahmin took a dislike to a girl he had just married, and turned 

 her out of doors, a wedded maid. She took refuge with her parents 

 who were poor, and who soon after died, leaving her destitute ; then 

 she wandered from village to village subsisting on alms "and leading a 

 wretched widowed life. Her husband married a second time, and sons 

 and daughters were born to him and grew up about him, and in the 

 fullness of years he died. His second wife had preceded him, so his 

 corpse was placed alone on the funeral pile, and the torch was about 

 to be applied to it, when a poor emaciated and meanly clad female 

 stepped forward, and as the first, the faithful and only surviving wife 

 of the deceased, claimed the right of suttee. Her request was com- 

 plied with. Bathed, anointed, clothed, and adorned with flowers like 

 a bride, she ascended the pile and clinging to the corpse of the hus- 

 band who had so cruelly discarded her, and for the first time in her 

 life pressing her lips to his, the flames arose and their ashes were 

 mingled together ! 



There is no doubt still a strong sentiment in favour of suttee in the 

 Tributary Mehals, and States under native government. Its prohibition 

 has not been long enforced in the eastern parts of Rewa. Not long 

 ago, in that territory, on the death of a Brahmin, his widow, notwith- 

 standing the prohibition, was so vehement in her desire to join her 

 husband on the pyre, that her relatives as the only method of restrain- 

 ing her, locked her up. When the ceremony was over they proceeded 

 to release her, but found that her spirit too had fled. She had attained 

 her object, as my informant declared, by a special interposition of 

 Providence in her behalf. 



Proceeding north-west from Nugra and the banks of the Brahmini 

 river, you enter the Nuagurh division of Grangpore and come to 

 Lainggurh, near the confluence of several streams, which was once the 

 capital and promises to be so again, as the present Rajah is just now 



