Travels in India (Tavernier) 124.8

124.8

The woman who intends to burn herself, preceded by some drums, flutes, and hautboys, and dressed in her most beautiful ornaments, comes dancing to the funeral pile, and having ascended it she places herself, half-lying, half-seated. Then the body of her husband is laid across her, and all the relatives and friends bring her, one a letter, another a piece of cloth, this one flowers, that one pieces of silver or copper, saying to her, give this from me to my mother, or to my brother, or to some relative or friend, whoever the dead person may be whom they have most loved while alive. When the woman sees that they bring her nothing more, she asks those present three times whether they have any more commissions for her, and if they do not reply she wraps all they have brought in a taffeta, which she places between her lap and the back of the body of her defunct husband, calling upon the priests to apply fire to the funeral pile. This the Brahmins and the relatives do simultaneously. As there is, as I have remarked, but little wood in the Kingdom of Bengal, as soon as these miserable women are dead and half burnt, their bodies are thrown into the Ganges with those of their husbands, where they are eaten by the crocodiles. I should not forget here an evil custom which is practised among the idolaters of the same Kingdom of Bengal.