[4] I threatened to
enforce my order, and punish severely any man who assisted; and
placed a police guard for the purpose of seeing that no one did so.
She remained sitting by the edge of the water without eating or
drinking. The next day the body of her husband was burned to ashes in
a small pit of about eight feet square, and three or four feet deep,
before several thousand spectators who had assembled to see the
suttee. All strangers dispersed before evening, as there seemed to be
no prospect of my yielding to the urgent solicitations of her family,
who dared not touch food till she had burned herself, or declared
herself willing to return to them. Her sons, grandsons, and some
other relations remained with her, while the rest surrounded my
house, the one urging me to allow her to burn, and the other urging
her to desist. She remained sitting on a bare rock in the bed of the
Nerbudda, refusing every kind of sustenance, and exposed to the
intense heat of the sun by day, and the severe cold of the night,
with only a thin sheet thrown over her shoulders. On Thursday, to cut
off all hope of her being moved from her purpose, she put on the
dhaja, or coarse red turban, and broke her bracelets in pieces, by
which she became dead in law, and for ever excluded from caste.
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