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." *

[* Moorlee Monowur, a very respectable agricultural capitalist, tells
me, that all that his younger brother, Seetaram, told me, about the
suttee, if strictly tru