Suttee
event · 2 works · 3 mentions · 3 anchored passages
widow-burning · suttee
in the texts
Lectures on the Early History of Institutions
The Hindoo practice of widow-burning, cited as a custom investigated and found to lack ancient scriptural sanction.
The attention of English and European students of the Hindoo law books was first attracted to this subject by a natural desire to scrutinise the sacred texts upon which the Brahmin learned were in the habit of insisting in defence of the abominable practice of Suttee or widow-burning.
But it was exactly in Bengal Proper that the English, on entering India, found the Suttee, or widow-burning, not merely an occasional, but a constant and almost universal practice with the wealthier classes, and, as a rule, it was only the childless widow, and never the widow with minor children, who burnt herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.
Law in a Free State
The historical practice of widow immolation, invoked as a comparison to judge the severity of State-sanctioned mercenary marriage.
Barbarities such as these—far worse than suttee—could not exist under a free system.