28 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
During this tardy but terrible process, the doomed 
woman sits an unconcerned spectator, occasionally ca- 
ressing the corpse, and looking with an expression of 
almost sublime triumph, as the earth embraces her 
body, at the anticipated honours which await her in 
the paradise of her God. The hands of her own children 
are perhaps at that very moment heaping around her 
the cold dust into which she is so soon to be resolved. 
At length, all but her head is covered, when the pit 
is hurriedly filled in, and her nearest relatives dance 
over her inhumed body with those frantic gestures 
which, whether they betoken ecstasy or madness, it is 
difficult on witnessing them to decide. 
It is remarkable that these immolations are fre- 
quently made by women to the manes of husbands 
who have uniformly treated them with indifference, 
and often with the most unjustifiable tyranny. Still 
nothing, in many instances, checks the devoted hero- 
ism of the Hindoo widow : no unkind treatment in- 
validates in her mind the most sacred of all obliga- 
tions ; she forgives every past unkindness, and directs 
her thoughts to the future ; acting upon the beautiful 
principle of the Persian poet, who has so eloquently 
inculcated the Christian maxim of rewarding evil 
with good : — 
“ Learn from yon orient shell to love thy foe, 
And store with pearls the hand that brings thee woe ; 
Free, like yon rock, from base vindictive pride, 
Emblaze with gems the wrist that rends thy side. 
Mark where yon tree rewards the stony shower 
With fruit nectareous, or the balmy flower. 
All nature calls aloud ! — “ Shall man do less 
Than heal the smiter and the railer bless?”* 
* Hafiz. 
