تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 10.12.2

10.12.2

Then it happened some time later that I was in a town, most of whose inhabitants were infidels, called Amjarī, whose amīr was a Muslim of the Sāmira of Sind, and near it were rebel infidels. One day they cut the road, and the Muslim amīr went out to fight them, and his subjects, Muslims and infidels, went out with him. A fierce battle took place between them in which seven of the infidel subjects died, and three of them had three wives, who agreed to burn themselves. Among them the burning of a woman after her husband is a recommended act, not an obligatory one; but when a woman burns herself after her husband, her household gains honour by it and is credited with fidelity, whereas one who does not burn herself puts on coarse clothes and lives with her family wretched and despised for her lack of fidelity; yet she is not compelled to burn herself. When the three women we mentioned had pledged to burn themselves, they spent three days beforehand in singing, merriment, eating and drinking, as though bidding farewell to the world, and women came to them from every quarter. On the morning of the fourth day each of them was brought a horse, and she mounted it, adorned and perfumed, holding in her right hand a coconut which she played with and in her left a mirror in which she looked at her face. The Brahmans surrounded her, her relatives were with her, and before her were drums, trumpets and horns. Every one of the infidels would say to her: 'Give my greetings to my father, or my brother, or my mother, or my friend!' and she would say 'Yes,' and laugh at them. I rode with my companions to see how they went about the burning. We went with them about three miles and came to a dark place with much water and many trees, its shade dense, and among its trees were four domed shrines, in each of which was an idol of stone. Between the shrines was a water tank over which the shade was thick and the trees crowded, so that the sun did not pass through them, and it was as though that place were a spot of Hell — God preserve us from it! When we reached those shrines, they went down into