[* These are terms of abuse all over India.  To call a man sussoor or salah, in abuse, is to say to him, I have dishonoured your daughter or your sister!]

“I remember an instance of a woman burning herself at Lasoora, six miles from Biswa, when I was fifteen years of age, and I am now twenty-five.  She certainly seemed to suffer no pain.  One forenoon she told her husband that in a former birth she had promised him that when he should be born a maha brahman at Biswa, she would unite herself in marriage to him, and live with him as his wife for twelve years; that these twelve years had now expired, and that she had that night received intimation from Heaven that her real husband, Rajah Kirpah Shunker, of Muthura, had died without having been married in this birth; that she was in reality his wife, and had already burnt herself five times with his body, and would now mix her ashes with his for the sixth time, and he must forthwith send her to the village of Lasoora, where she would become a suttee.  The husband was astounded, for they had always lived together on the best possible terms, and out of the four children they had had two still survived.  He and all their relations did all they could to dissuade her, but she disregarded them, and ran off to the Sewala (temple) in Biswa, which was built by my father.  Thence she sent a Brahmin, by name Gokurn, to call me and my elder brother, Morlee Munohur, then seventeen years of age.  We went, and she told us that she had been our mother in a former birth, and wished to see us once more before she died; she blessed us, and prayed that we might have each five sons, and then told us to arrange for her funeral pile at Lasoora, as all her former five suttees had been performed at that place.

“We thought she was delirious, and no one supposed that she would really burn herself.  She, however, left the temple and proceeded towards Lasoora on foot, followed by a party of women and children, and by her husband, who continued to implore her to return home with him.  He had a litter with him to take her, but she would not listen to him or to any one else.  We reached Lasoora about an hour and a half before sunset, and she ordered the people to collect a large pile of wood for her, and told them that she would light it with a flame from her own mouth.  They seemed to regard her as an inspired person, and did so.  She mounted the pile, and it soon took fire, how I know not!  Many people said they saw the flame come from her month, and all seemed to believe that it did so.  The flames ascended, for it was in the month of March, and the wood was dry, and she seemed to be quite happy as she sat in the midst of them, and was burnt to death.  Her husband told us, that she had lost one son some years before, and another only four days before she burnt herself, and that she had been much afflicted at his death.  Whether there really had been such a person as Rajah Kirpah Shunker, no one ever thought it necessary to inquire.  Her suttee tomb still stands at Lasoora among many others.  Our mother was alive, though our father had been dead many years, and she used to say that the poor woman must have become deranged at the death of her child.  The people all believed that she told the truth, and the husband was obliged to yield, though he seemed much afflicted.  Her two sons still live, and reside at Biswa.” *