her being moved from her purpose, she put on the dhaja, or coarse red turban, and broke her bracelets in pieces, by which she became dead in law, and for ever excluded from caste.  Should she choose to live after this, she could never return to her family.  Her children and grandchildren were still with her, but all their entreaties were unavailing; and I became satisfied that she would starve herself to death, if not allowed to burn, by which the family would be disgraced, her miseries prolonged, and I myself rendered liable to be charged with a wanton abuse of authority, for no prohibition of the kind I had issued had as yet received the formal sanction of the Government.

On Saturday, the 28th, in the morning, I rode out ten miles to the spot, and found the poor old widow sitting with the dhaja round her head, a brass plate before her with undressed rice and flowers, and a coco-nut in each hand.  She talked very collectedly, telling me that ’she had determined to mix her ashes with those of her departed husband, and should patiently wait my permission to do so, assured that God would enable her to sustain life till that was given, though she dared not eat or drink’.  Looking at the sun, then rising before her over a long and beautiful reach of the Nerbudda river, she said calmly, ’My soul has been for five days with my husband’s near that sun, nothing but my earthly frame is left; and this, I know, you will in time suffer to be mixed with the ashes of his in yonder pit, because it is not in your nature or usage wantonly to prolong the miseries of a poor old woman’.

’Indeed, it is not,—­my object and duty is to save and preserve them [sic]; and I am come to dissuade you from this idle purpose, to urge you to live, and to keep your family from the disgrace of being thought your murderers.’

’I am not afraid of their ever being so thought:  they have all, like good children, done everything in their power to induce me to live among them; and, if I had done so, I know they would have loved and honoured me; but my duties to them have now ended.  I commit them all to your care, and I go to attend my husband, Ummed Singh Upadhya, with whose ashes on the funeral pile mine have been already three times mixed.’[5]

This was the first time in her long life that she had ever pronounced the name of her husband, for in India no woman, high or low, ever pronounces the name of her husband,—­she would consider it disrespectful towards him to do so; and it is often amusing to see their embarrassment when asked the question by any European gentleman.  They look right and left for some one to relieve them from the dilemma of appearing disrespectful either to the querist or to their absent husbands—­they perceive that he is unacquainted with their duties on this point, and are afraid he will attribute their silence to disrespect.  They know that few European gentlemen are acquainted with them; and when women go into our courts of justice,