HINDOO SUTTEE. 
229 
He twice turned, and attacked the party who pursued hiin, and in 
one of these attacks struck obliquely the elephant on which the 
prince rode, threw him upon his side, but then passed on without 
offering farther injury. At last he fell dead, after having received^ 
as w as supposed upwards of one thousand balls in his body. 
Hindoo Suttee. 
The follow'ing interesting account of one of these dreadful sacrifices, 
extracted from the letter of an English officer who superintended the 
ceremony, places the influence of fanaticism, in supporting this horrid 
custom, in its proper light : — ‘*In my present situation, it falls to my lot 
to preside over the executions of criminals, and also oyer those hor- 
rible exhibitions peculiar to this country, of a widow burning herself 
on the funeral pile of her dead husband : and as the authentic account 
of such a scene may be interesting, I send you a short description of 
a suttee, at which 1 was lately present in my new character of pre*^ 
siding officer. The day before if took place, (as is customary,) a 
report came from the police, of the widow’s intention to burn herself, 
if the magistrate gave his permission. On the principle of religious 
toleration, this is always given : the magistrate is allowed to argue, 
and to endeavour to dissuade the woman from her purpose, but can- 
not absolutely forbid it, unless .under certain circumstances, such as 
wffien it is not perfectly voluntary on her part. Myself and several 
friends went to her house, and did all we could to turn her from her 
design ; but she answered only by quoting her bible, in which she 
observed, it is written, ‘ The widow who, burns herself with her hus- 
band’s body enjoys happiness with him in heaven.^ Having thus 
failed in our entreaties, which are indeed usu&lly to no purpose, w^e 
ordered a guard to watch, and take care that she had no opium or 
intoxicating drugs given her, and that she went to her death in her 
senses, at least as much so as she could be under the influence of 
such extraordinary fanaticism. The next morning, at daybreak^ 
we proceeded to the ground appropriated to the ceremony, where the 
woman had just arrived in a rude sort of car, carried on men’s 
shoulders, and accompanied by the barbarous music of her country. 
She seemed quite unconcerned at the preparations for the horrid 
sacrifice she was about to perform. For ray part, when I looked at 
the pile on which lay her husband’s dead body, the faggots, her 
nearest relations with fire-brands lighting the pile, the victim dressed 
and adorned w ith flowers, — the whole scene appeared to me as a frightful 
vision : I could hardly persuade myself of its reality. I spoke to her 
once more, (being a high-caste woman, she spoke the Hindoostanee 
language,) and represented to her the horrible death she was about 
to suffer, and the long time she must continue in the most dreadful 
agony. I urged to her, that it was no sudden or easy death by which 
she was to reach paradise, but a protracted course of torture. She 
heard me out with calmness, thanked me for my intentions, which 
she admitted w^ere good, but again repeated her intention so decidedly 
as to preclude any hope of saving her. I felt her pulse, and it was 
far calmer than my own at the moment I am WTiting. Mrs. E., of 
