Storia do Mogor 258.10

258.10

When the three days have passed, they prepare in an open field a circular pit, deep and wide, which is filled with wood and cowdung. Fire is then applied. On beholding this pyre, she who is to be the victim of her honour, issues, clad in new attire, covered with divers coloured flowers, some arranged like crowns, others like necklaces. Escorted by all her friends, male and female, she approaches the fire. Before it stands a small screen about five feet high. Over its top they throw into the fire a little saffron and some butter and other spices. After prayers have been recited the heroine withdraws about forty paces and returns two times, one after the other, to the place she started from, and each time performs the same ceremonial. At length she retires for the third time some forty paces farther than before ; at that moment the screen before the fire is withdrawn. Then, with a rush, she bounds into the pit, and in a short time there is nothing left but her ashes to furnish an epitaph on her constancy. The Hindus think so highly of those who are burnt in this way that they assert their reincarnation as goddesses in the heaven of Vishnu ; and in that quality there are erected to them statues as soon as they are dead. This is done equally for the husband. They assume that men blessed with wives of such great virtue as to sacrifice life for their honour, must without fail be placed among the gods.