"The English promised not to interfere in our religious
affairs, and they must keep their word!" was the general outcry.
Never was India so near revolution as in those days. The English
saw the danger and gave up the task. But Professor Wilson, the
best Sanskritist of the time, did not consider the battle lost.
He applied himself to the study of the most ancient MSS., and
gradually became convinced that the alleged precept did not exist
in the Vedas; though in the Laws of Manu it was quite distinct,
and had been translated accordingly by T. Colebrooke and other
Orientalists. An attempt to prove to the fanatic population that
Manu's interpretation was wrong would have been equivalent to an
attempt to reduce water to powder. So Wilson set himself to
study Manu, and to compare the text of the Vedas with the text
of this law-giver. This was the result of his labors: the Rig
Veda orders the Brahman to place the widow side by side with the
corpse, and then, after the performance of certain rites, to lead
her down from the funeral pyre and to sing the following verse
from Grhya Sutra:
Arise, O woman! return to the world of the living!
Having gone to sleep by the dead, awake again!
Long enough thou hast been a faithful wife
To the one who made thee mother of his children.
Then those present at the burning were to rub their eyes with
collyrium, and the Brahman to address to them the following verse:
Approach, you married women, not widows,
With your husbands bring ghi and butter.
Pages:
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275