one day gave a holy man who came to ask charity salt, by mistake, instead of sugar, with his food.  That, in consequence, he told her she should, in the next birth, be separated from her husband, and be of inferior caste; but that, if she did her duty well in that state, she should be reunited to him in the following birth.  We told her that all this must be a dream, and the widow of my brother insisted that, if she were not allowed to burn herself, the other should not be allowed to take her place.  We prevented the widow from ascending the pile, and she died at a good old age only two years ago at Sihora.  My brother’s body was burned at Sihora, and the poor Lodhi woman came and stole one handful of the ashes, which she placed in her bosom, and took back with her to Khitoli.  There she prevailed upon her husband and her brother to assist her in her return to her former husband and caste as a Brahman.  No soul else would assist them, as we got the then native chief to prohibit it; and these three persons brought on their own heads the pile, on which she seated herself, with the ashes in her bosom.  The husband and his brother set fire to the pile, and she was burned.’[19]

‘And what is now your opinion, after a lapse of twenty years?’

’Why, that she had really been the wife of my brother; for at the pile she prophesied that my nephew Duli should be, what his grandfather had been, high in the service of the Government, and, as you know, he soon after became so.’

‘And what did your father think?’

’He was so satisfied that she had been the wife of his eldest son in a former birth, that he defrayed all the expenses of her funeral ceremonies, and had them all observed with as much magnificence as those of any member of the family.  Her tomb is still to be seen at Khitoli, and that of my brother at Sihora.’

I went to look at these tombs with Bholi Sukul himself some short time after this conversation, and found that all the people of the town of Sihora and village of Khitoli really believed that the old Lodhi woman had been his brother’s wife in a former birth, and had now burned herself as his widow for the fourth time.  Her tomb is at Khitoli, and his at Sihora.

Notes: 

1. Sati, a virtuous woman, especially one who burns herself with her husband.  The word, in common usage, is transferred to the sacrifice of the woman.

2.  The women of Bundelkhand wear the same costume, a full loin-cloth, as those of the Jubbulpore district.  North of the Jumna an ordinary petticoat is generally worn.

3.  Suttee was prohibited during the administration of Lord William Bentinck by the Bengal Regulation xvii, dated 4th December, 1829, extended in 1830 to Madras and Bombay.  The advocates of the practice unsuccessfully appealed to the Privy Council.  Several European officers defended the custom.  A well-written account of the suttee legislation is given in Mr. D. Boulger’s work on Lord William Bentinck in the ‘Rulers of India’ series.