,
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.

4. Whenever it is practicable, Hindoos are placed on the banks of
sacred rivers to die, especially in Bengal.

5. For explanation of this phrase, see the following story of the
Lodhi woman, following note [14], in this chapter. The