“were either buried alive or strangled, often at their own desire, because they believed that in this way alone could they reach the realms of bliss, and that she who met her death with the greatest devotedness would become the favorite wife in the abode of spirits.  On the other hand, a widow who did not permit herself to be killed was considered an adulteress.”

To realize vividly how far widow-burning is from being an act of voluntary wifely devotion one must read Abbe Dubois’s account of the matter (I., chap. 21).  He explains that, however chaste and devoted a wife may have been during her husband’s life, she is treated worse than the lowest outcast if she wants to survive him.  By a “voluntary” death, on the contrary, she becomes “an illustrious victim of conjugal attachment,” and is “considered in the light of a deity.”  On the way to the funeral pyre the accompanying multitude stretch out their hands toward her in token of admiration.  They behold her as already translated into the paradise of Vishnu and seem to envy her happy lot.  The women run up to her to receive her blessing, and she knows that afterward crowds of votaries will daily frequent her shrine.  The Brahmans compliment her on her heroism. (Sometimes drugs are administered to stifle her fears.) She knows, too, that it is useless to falter at the last moment, as a change of heart would be an eternal disgrace, not only to herself but to her relatives, who, therefore, stand around with sabres and rifles to intimidate her.  In short, with satanic ingenuity, every possible appeal is made to her family pride, vanity, longing for future bliss and divine honors after life, enforced by the knowledge that if she lives earth will be a hell to her, so that refusal is next to impossible.  And this is the much-vaunted “conjugal affection and fidelity” of Hindoo widows!

FEMININE DEVOTION IN ANCIENT LITERATURE

The practice of “voluntary” widow-burning is, as the foregoing shows, about as convincing proof of wifely devotion as the presence of an ox in the butcher’s stall is proof of his gastronomic devotion to man.  In reality it is, as I have said, simply the most diabolical aspect of man’s aboriginal disposition to look on woman as made solely for his own comfort and pleasure, here and hereafter.  Now it is very instructive to note that whenever there is a story of conjugal devotion in Oriental or ancient classical literature it is nearly always inspired by the same spirit—­the idea that the woman, as an inferior being, should subject herself to any amount of suffering if she can thereby save her sacred lord and master the slightest pang.  For instance, an old Arabic writer (Kamil Mobarrad, p. 529) relates how a devoted wife whose husband was condemned to death disfigured her beautiful face in order to let him die with the consoling feeling that she would not marry again.  The current notion that such stories