986 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap.
- « About the year 1796, the following most
shocking and atrocious murder, under the name of Sahamarana, was perpetrated at Majilpur, about a day’s journey south from Calcutta. Banchha- rama, a Brahman of the above place, dying, his wife at a late hour went to be burnt with the body : all the previous ceremonies were performed; she was fastened on the pile, and the fire was kind- led; but the night was dark and rainy. When the fire began to scorch this poor woman, she contrived to disentangle herself from the dead body, and creeping from under the file, hid herself among some brushwood. In a little time it was discovered that there was only one body on the pile. The relations immediately took the alarm and searched for the wretch; the son soon dragged her forth, and in- sisted that she should throw herself on the pile, or drown or hang herself; she pleaded for her life at the hands of her own son, and declared that she could not embrace so horrid a death—but she pleaded in vain: the son urged, that he should lose his caste, and that therefore he would die or she should. Unable to persuade her to hang or drown herself, the son and the others present then tied her hands and feet, and threw her on the funeral
pile, where she quickly perished.” We ask our readers to read the vernacular treatises of the Raja on Suttee-rites, which are master-pieces of close argumentative writings dis- | | | closing his great humane feelings and profound scholarship.t
- Ward's on the Hindus, Vol. II, Part III, Page 304.
+ Raja Rama Mohana Roy’s Bengali works, Pages 167-223.
