Temples, religious ceremonies, society, are closed to her
for ever. She has no right to speak to any of her relations, and
no right to eat with them. She sleeps, eats and works separately;
her touch is considered impure for seven years. If a man, going
out on business, meets a widow, he goes home again, abandoning
every pursuit, because to see a widow is accounted an evil omen.
In the past all this was seldom practised, and concerned only
the rich widows, who refused to be burned; but now, since the
Brahmans have been caught in the false interpretation of the Vedas,
with the criminal intention of appropriating the widows' wealth,
they insist on the fulfilment of this cruel precept, and make what
once was the exception the rule. They are powerless against
British law, and so they revenge themselves on the innocent and
helpless women, whom fate has deprived of their natural protectors.
Professor Wilson's demonstration of the means by which the Brahmans
distorted the sense of the Vedas, in order to justify the practice
of widow-burning, is well worth mentioning. During the many
centuries that this terrible practice prevailed, the Brahmans
had appealed to a certain Vedic text for their justification,
and had claimed to be rigidly fulfilling the institutes of Manu,
which contain for them the interpretation of Vedic law. When
the East India Company's Government first turned its attention
to the suppression of suttee, the whole country, from Cape Comorin
to the Himalayas, rose in protest, under the influence of the
Brahmans.
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