A PAINFUL SPECTACLE 363
where she was to yield up her life in so ghastly a manner, it was observed that her firmness suddenly gave way. Plunged, as it were, in gloomy thought, she seemed to pay
no attention whatever to what was passing around her.
Her looks became wildly fixed upon the pile. Her face grew deadly pale. Her very limbs were in a convulsive tremor. Her drawn features and haggard face betrayed the fright that had seized her, while a sudden weakening
of her senses betokened that she was ready to faint away.
The Brahmins who conducted the ceremony, and also her
near relatives, ran quickly to her, endeavouring to keep up her courage and to revive her drooping spirits. All was of no effect. The unfortunate woman, bewildered and distracted, turned a deaf ear to all their exhortations and preserved a deep silence.
She was then made to leave the palanquin, and as she was
scarcely able to walk, her people helped her to drag herself to a pond near the pyre. She plunged into the water with all her clothes and ornaments on, and was immediately
afterwards led to the pyre, on which the body of her husband was already laid. The pyre was surrounded by Brahmins, each with a lighted torch in one hand and a bowl of ghee in the other. Her relatives and friends, several of whom were armed with muskets, swords, and other weapons, stood closely round in a double line, and seemed to await impatiently the end of this shocking tragedy. This armed
force, they told me, was intended not only to intimidate the unhappy victim in case the terror of her approaching death might induce her to run away, but also to overawe
any persons who might be moved by a natural feeling of compassion and sympathy, and so tempted to prevent the
accomplishment of the homicidal sacrifice.
At length, the purohita Brahmin gave the fatal signal.
The poor widow was instantly divested of all her jewels, and dragged, more dead than alive, to the pyre. There she
they force upon these wretched victims of superstition a kind of drink, which confuses the mind and prevents them from forming a correct notion of the dreadful torture to which they are being led. This beverage, they say, consists of a decoction of saffron. It is known that dried saffron pistils( Crocus sativus), taken in large quantities, cause violent and convulsive laughter, sometimes terminating in death. Dubois.