The Bengali Poem , Candi . 
41 
If I have sinned, then scorch me with thy brand; 
If I am pure, rest gently in my hand.” 
She stretches forth her hands the bar to clasp, 
The burning mass is lowered into her grasp ; 
With head bowed low she hears it all alone, 
Through the seven rounds she bears it, one by one, 
Till on the straw at last the bar she lays,— 
Up in a moment flames the straw ablaze. 
Still Qankha Datt looks on in discontent, 
And thus he gives his bitter envy vent: 
“ I’m half afraid to interpose my say, 
But false ordeals—what are they but play ? 
There was some witchcraft in it—all was plann’d, 
Hence was that bar like water in her hand.” 
Another test was tried—the Brahmans came 
And set on fire some ghl,—up flashed the flame ; 
But Khullana, where the flame was fiercest, turned, 
Dropped the gold in, then took it out, unburned. 
Then Madhab Candra: “ Call you this a test? 
It was a false ordeal, like the rest. 
Pay the sum down, ordeals all are vain; 
So, your wife cleared, your honour you ’ll regain.” * 
Though sore provoked that thus each trial fails, 
Once more the merchant yields to try the scales,f 
Again does Khullana, fearless, meet the event, 
Once more the proof proclaims her innocent. 
Then Ghusha Datt comes forth the case to mend: 
“ I sympathize with your distress, my friend; 
Your fellow-castemen, right and left, you see, 
Still wag their tongues whate’er th’ ordeals be. 
* The second edition here adds the account of another ordeal with panai water. 
A Bengali friend, whom I consulted on this obscure phrase, writes as follows: “ Pana, 
is a plant which overspreads every foul tank ; it is very common in Calcutta, and so is the 
word ; panai means ‘ covered with pana.’’ Water so covered is very cold, because it never 
feels the sunlight, and any person bathing in a tank covered with pana is liable to have 
cutaneous diseases. The word is pronounced and written panai now.” As the passage is 
omitted in the first edition, I have ventured to leave it out in my translation. 
t See the Institutes of Vishnu, x (Jolly’s transl., Sacred Books of the East , vol. vii); the 
innocent man weighs lighter at the second trial. 
