Oct. 1828.—A letter just received from a lady, a friend of mine, at Lucnow, is so amusing and so novel, I must make an extract:—

“The other day, (Oct. 18th,) was the anniversary of the King of Oude’s coronation; and I went to see the ceremony, one I had never witnessed before, and with which I was much gratified. But the greatest treat was a visit to the begam’s afterwards, when the whole of the wives, aunts, cousins, &c., were assembled in state to receive us.

“The old begam (the king’s mother), was the great lady, of course, and in her palace were we received; the others being considered her guests, as well as ourselves. It was a most amusing sight, as I had never witnessed the interior of a zenāna before, and so many women assembled at once I had never beheld. I suppose from first to last we saw some thousands. Women-bearers carried our tanjans; a regiment of female gold and silver-sticks, dressed in male costume, were drawn up before the entrance; and those men, chiefly Africans, who were employed inside the zenāna (and there were abundance of these frightful creatures), were all of the same class as the celebrated Velluti. The old begam was without jewels or ornaments, likewise a very pretty and favourite wife of the late king, their state of widowhood precluding their wearing them. But the present king’s wives were most superbly dressed, and looked like creatures of the Arabian tales. Indeed, one was so beautiful, that I could think of nothing but Lalla Rookh in her bridal attire.

“I never saw any one so lovely, either black or white. Her features were perfect; and such eyes and eyelashes I never beheld before. She is the favourite queen at present, and has only been married a month or two: her age about fourteen; and such a little creature, with the smallest hands and feet, and the most timid, modest look imaginable. You would have been charmed with her, she was so graceful and fawn-like. Her dress was of gold and scarlet brocade, and her hair was literally strewed with pearls, which hung down upon her neck in long single strings, terminating in large pearls, which mixed with and hung as low as her hair, which was curled on each side her head in long ringlets, like Charles the Second’s beauties.

“On her forehead she wore a small gold circlet, from which depended (and hung half-way down her forehead) large pear-shaped pearls, interspersed with emeralds. The pearls were of this size and form, and had a very becoming effect, close upon the forehead, between the eyes. Above this was a paradise plume, from which strings of pearls were carried over the head, as we turn our hair.

“I fear you will not understand me. Her ear-rings were immense gold-rings, with pearls and emeralds suspended all round in long strings, the pearls increasing in size. She had a nose-ring also, with large round pearls and emeralds; and her necklaces, &c., were too numerous to be described. She wore long sleeves, open at the elbow; and her dress was a full petticoat, some dozen yards wide, with a tight body attached, and only open at the throat. She had several persons to bear her train when she walked; and her women stood behind her couch to arrange her head-dress, when in moving her pearls got entangled in the immense dopatta of scarlet and gold she had thrown around her. How I wished for you when we were seated! you would have been delighted with the whole scene. This beautiful creature is the envy of all the other wives, and the favourite, at present, of the king and his mother, both of whom have given her titles—the king’s is after the favourite wife of one of the celebrated kings of Delhi, ‘Tajmahŭl,’ and Nourmahŭl herself could not have been more lovely.

“The other newly-made queen is nearly European, but not a whit fairer than Tajmahŭl. She is, in my opinion, plain, but is considered by the native ladies very handsome; and she was the king’s favourite until he saw Tajmahŭl.

“She was more splendidly dressed than even Tajmahŭl; her head-dress was a coronet of diamonds, with a fine crescent and plume of the same. She is the daughter of an European merchant, and is accomplished for an inhabitant of a zenāna, as she writes and speaks Persian fluently, as well as Hindostani, and it is said she is teaching the king English; though, when we spoke to her in English, she said she had forgotten it, and could not reply. She was, I fancy, afraid of the old begam, as she evidently understood us; and when asked if she liked being in the zenāna, she shook her head and looked quite melancholy. Jealousy of the new favourite, however, appeared the cause of her discontent, as, though they sat on the same couch, they never addressed each other. And now you must be as tired of the begams, as I am of writing about them.

“The mother of the king’s children, Mulka Zumanee, did not visit us at the old queen’s, but we went to see her at her own palace: she is, after all, the person of the most political consequence, being the mother of the heir-apparent; and she has great power over her royal husband, whose ears she boxes occasionally.

“The Delhi princess, to whom the king was betrothed and married by his father, we did not see; she is in disgrace, and confined to her own palace. The old begam talked away to us, but appeared surprised I should admire Tajmahŭl more than the English begam, as she is called,—my country-woman as they styled her!

“Poor thing, I felt ashamed of the circumstance, when I saw her chewing pān with all the gusto of a regular Hindostanee.”

The above letter contains so charming an account of Lucnow, that I cannot refrain from adding an extract from another of the same lady.

“At the residency, on such a day as this, the thermometer is seldom short of 100°!

“Did you ever hear of Colonel Gardner? he is married to a native princess. The other day he paid Lucnow a visit. His son’s wife is sister to the legal queen of our present worthy sovereign of Oude. Colonel Gardner came on a visit to the begam’s father, Mirza Sulimān Sheko, a prince of the house of Delhi, blessed with fifty-two children, twelve sons and forty daughters! Did you ever hear of such enormity? the poor papa is without a rupee, his pension from government of 5000 rupees a month is mortgaged to his numerous creditors. He has quarrelled with his illustrious son-in-law, the king of Oude; and Colonel Gardner has come over with the laudable purpose of removing his family from Oude to Delhi, where they will have a better chance of being provided for.

“Indeed, the other day, seventeen of the daughters were betrothed to seventeen princes of Delhi: this is disposing of one’s daughters by wholesale! is it not? Colonel Gardner, who is a very gentlemanlike person, I hear, of the old school, was educated in France some fifty years ago. He gave a description of his sojourn amongst this small family in the city, in these words,—‘I slept every night with the thermometer at 100°, and surrounded by 500 females!’

“What a situation! I do not know which would be the most overpowering, the extreme heat, or the incessant clack of the forty princesses and their attendants. It reminds me of the old fairy tale of the ‘Ogre’s forty daughters with golden crowns on their heads.’”

On dit, the English begam was the daughter of a half caste and an English officer; her mother afterwards married a native buniyā (shop-keeper). She had a sister; both the girls lived with the mother, and employed themselves in embroidering saddle-cloths for the horses of the rich natives. They were both very plain; nevertheless, one of them sent her picture to his majesty, who, charmed with the portrait, married the lady. She had money in profusion at her command: she made her father-in-law her treasurer, and pensioned her mother and sister.

The Suttee.

A rich buniyā, a corn chandler, whose house was near the gate of our grounds, departed this life; he was an Hindoo. On the 7th of November, the natives in the bazār were making a great noise with their tom-toms, drums, and other discordant musical instruments, rejoicing that his widow had determined to perform suttee, i.e. to burn on his funeral-pile.

The magistrate sent for the woman, used every argument to dissuade her, and offered her money. Her only answer was, dashing her head on the floor, and saying, “If you will not let me burn with my husband, I will hang myself in your court of justice.” The shāstrs say, “The prayers and imprecations of a suttee are never uttered in vain; the great gods themselves cannot listen to them unmoved.”

If a widow touch either food or water from the time her husband expires until she ascend the pile, she cannot, by Hindoo law, be burned with the body; therefore the magistrate kept the corpse forty-eight hours, in the hope that hunger would compel the woman to eat. Guards were set over her, but she never touched any thing. My husband accompanied the magistrate to see the suttee: about 5000 people were collected together on the banks of the Ganges: the pile was then built, and the putrid body placed upon it; the magistrate stationed guards to prevent the people from approaching it. After having bathed in the river, the widow lighted a brand, walked round the pile, set it on fire, and then mounted cheerfully: the flame caught and blazed up instantly; she sat down, placing the head of the corpse on her lap, and repeated several times the usual form, “Ram, Ram, suttee; Ram, Ram, suttee,” i.e. “God, God, I am chaste.”

As the wind drove the fierce fire upon her, she shook her arms and limbs as if in agony; at length she started up and approached the side to escape. An Hindoo, one of the police who had been placed near the pile to see she had fair play, and should not be burned by force, raised his sword to strike her, and the poor wretch shrank back into the flames. The magistrate seized and committed him to prison. The woman again approached the side of the blazing pile, sprang fairly out, and ran into the Ganges, which was within a few yards. When the crowd and the brothers of the dead man saw this, they called out, “Cut her down, knock her on the head with a bamboo; tie her hands and feet, and throw her in again;” and rushed down to execute their murderous intentions, when the gentlemen and the police drove them back.

The woman drank some water, and having extinguished the fire on her red garment, said she would mount the pile again and be burned.

The magistrate placed his hand on her shoulder (which rendered her impure), and said, “By your own law, having once quitted the pile you cannot ascend again; I forbid it. You are now an outcast from the Hindoos, but I will take charge of you, the Company will protect you, and you shall never want food or clothing.”

He then sent her, in a palanquin, under a guard, to the hospital. The crowd made way, shrinking from her with signs of horror, but returned peaceably to their homes; the Hindoos annoyed at her escape, and the Mussulmans saying, “It was better that she should escape, but it was a pity we should have lost the tamāshā (amusement) of seeing her burnt to death.”

Had not the magistrate and the English gentlemen been present, the Hindoos would have cut her down when she attempted to quit the fire; or had she leapt out, would have thrown her in again, and have said, “She performed suttee of her own accord, how could we make her? it was the will of God.” As a specimen of their religion the woman said, “I have transmigrated six times, and have been burned six times with six different husbands; if I do not burn the seventh time, it will prove unlucky for me!” “What good will burning do you?” asked a bystander. She replied, “The women of my husband’s family have all been suttees, why should I bring disgrace upon them? I shall go to heaven, and afterwards re-appear on earth, and be married to a very rich man.” She was about twenty or twenty-five years of age, and possessed of some property, for the sake of which her relatives wished to put her out of the world.

If every suttee were conducted in this way, very few would take place in India. The woman was not much burned, with the exception of some parts on her arms and legs. Had she performed suttee, they would have raised a little cenotaph, or a mound of earth by the side of the river, and every Hindoo who passed the place returning from bathing would have made sālām to it; a high honour to the family. While we were in Calcutta, many suttees took place; but as they were generally on the other side of the river, we only heard of them after they had occurred. Here the people passed in procession, flags flying, and drums beating, close by our door. I saw them from the verandah; the widow, dressed in a red garment, was walking in the midst. My servants all ran to me, begging to be allowed to go and see the tamāshā (fun, sport), and having obtained permission, they all started off, except one man, who was pulling the pankhā, and he looked greatly vexed at being obliged to remain. The sāhib said, the woman appeared so perfectly determined, he did not think she would have quitted the fire. Having performed suttee according to her own account six times before, one would have thought from her miraculous incombustibility, she had become asbestos, only purified and not consumed by fire. I was glad the poor creature was not murdered; but she will be an outcast; no Hindoo will eat with her, enter her house, or give her assistance; and when she appears they will point at her and give her abuse. Her own and her husband’s family would lose caste if they were to speak to her: but, as an example, it will prevent a number of women from becoming suttees, and do infinite good: fortunately, she has no children. And these are the people called in Europe the “mild inoffensive Hindoos!”

The woman was mistress of a good house and about 800 rupees; the brothers of her deceased husband would, after her destruction, have inherited the property.

The burning of the widow is not commanded by the shāstrs: to perform suttee is a proof of devotion to the husband. The mountain Himalaya, being personified, is represented as a powerful monarch: his wife, Mena; their daughter is called Parvuti, or mountain-born, and Doorga, or difficult of access. She is said to have been married to Shivŭ in a pre-existing state when she was called Sŭtēē. After the marriage, Shivŭ on a certain occasion offended his father-in-law, King Dŭkshŭ, by refusing to make sālām to him as he entered the circle in which the king was sitting.

To be revenged, the monarch refused to invite Shivŭ to a sacrifice which he was about to perform. Sŭtēē, the king’s daughter, however, was resolved to go, though uninvited and forbidden by her husband. On her arrival, Dŭkshŭ poured a torrent of abuse on Shivŭ, which affected Sŭtēē so much that she died.

In memory of this proof of great affection, a Hindoo widow burning with her husband on the funeral-pile, is called a Sŭtēē.

The following passages are from the Hindoo Shāstrs:—

“There are 35,000,000 hairs on the human body. The woman who ascends the pile with her husband, will remain so many years in heaven.”

“As the snake draws the serpent from its hole, so she, rescuing her husband (from hell), rejoices with him.”

“The woman who expires on the funeral-pile of her husband, purifies the family of her mother, her father, and her husband.”

“So long as a woman, in her successive transmigrations, shall decline burning herself, like a faithful wife, on the same fire with her deceased lord, so long shall she not be exempted from springing again to life in the body of some female animal.”

“There is no virtue greater than a chaste woman burning herself with her husband:” the term Sŭtēē, here rendered “chaste” is thus explained; “commiserating with her husband in trouble, rejoicing in his joys, neglecting herself when he is gone from home, and dying at his death.”

“By the favour of a chaste woman the universe is preserved, on which account she is to be regarded by kings and people as a goddess.”

“If the husband be out of the country when he dies, let the virtuous wife take his slippers (or any thing else which belongs to his dress) and binding them, or it, on her breast, after purification, enter a separate fire.”

Mothers collect the cowries strewn by a sŭtēē as she walks round the pile, ere she fires it, and hang them round the necks of their sick children as a cure for disease.

In the plate entitled “Superstitions of the Natives,” fig. 3 represents the cowrie shells. (Cypræa moneta.)

The suttee took place on the banks of the Ganges, under the Bund between the Fort and Raj Ghat, a spot reckoned very holy and fortunate for the performance of the rite.

Several of our friends requested me, in case another suttee occurred, to send them timely notice. Five days afterwards, I was informed that a rānee[38] was to be burned. Accordingly I sent word to all my friends. Eight thousand people were assembled on the suttee-ground, who waited from mid-day to sunset: then a cry arose—“The mem sāhiba sent us here! the mem sāhiba said it was to take place to-day! see, the sun has set, there can now be no suttee!” The people dispersed. My informant told me what he himself believed, and I mystified some 8000 people most unintentionally.

TEMPLE OF BHAWĀNĪ AND SUTTEES, ALOPEE BAGH.

In Alopee Bagh, in the centre of a large plantation of mango-trees, is a small temple dedicated to Bhawānī; there is no image in it, merely a raised altar, on which victims were, I suppose, formerly sacrificed. Each of the small buildings on the right contains the ashes of a suttee; there are seven suttee-graves of masonry on this, and six of earth on the other side, near the temple, in the mango tope. The largest suttee-tomb contains the ashes of a woman who was burnt in 1825, i.e. six years ago. The ashes are always buried near a temple sacred to Bhāwanī, and never by any other. Families too poor to raise a tomb of masonry in memory of the burnt-sacrifice, are contented to raise a mound of earth, and place a kulsa of red earthenware to mark the spot. In the sketch of “The Kulsas[39],” Fig. 8 is one of this description, which I carried away from these suttee-mounds.

The temple of Bhawānī is shaded by a most beautiful peepul-tree, from the centre of which a fakīr’s flag was flying; it stands in a plantation of mango-trees. I desired an Hindoo, who was present when I sketched the temple, to count the suttee-graves around it. As he counted them, he repeatedly made sālām to each mound.

The kulsa, Fig. 8, is made of common unglazed red pottery: there are five points—one at the top, the others placed at equal spaces around it; between the points are two figures of human beings, and two emblems like a moon and a crescent, see Fig. 9. The kulsa is hollow, and has five holes, through which the points, which are of solid earthenware, are introduced before baking, see Fig. 10: height, ten inches and a half; circumference just below the points, twenty-six inches; diameter at bottom, six inches. The kulsa, Fig. 7, is another from a large suttee at the same spot, of a different form; they call it a topee walla kulsa. The suttees in the sketch of the temple of Bhawānī are all of masonry; the mounds are invisible, lying at the back of the temple.

Nov.—My beautiful Arab, Mootee, after taking a most marvellous quantity of blue vitriol and opium, has recovered, but will be unfit for my riding; the sinews of his fore-leg are injured; besides which, he is rather too playful; he knocked down his sā’īs yesterday, tore his clothes to pieces, bit two bits of flesh out of his back, and would perhaps have killed him, had not the people in the bazār interfered and rescued the man. It was an odd freak, he is such a sweet-tempered animal, and I never knew him behave incorrectly before.

We spent the month of December, our hunting season, at Papamhow; and purchased several couple of the Berkeley hounds, from the Calcutta kennel, for the pack at Allahabad. I received a present of an excellent little black horse with a long tail; and, mounted on him, used to go out every day after the jackals and foxes. I am rich in riding-horses, and the dark brown stud Arab Trelawny bids fair to rival Mootee in my affections. Returning from chasing a jackal one evening, it was very dark, and as Captain A— S— was cantering his Arab across the parade-ground, the animal put his foot into a deep hole, and fell; our friend thought nothing of it, and refused to be bled; a few days afterwards the regiment quitted Allahabad, and he died the second day, on the march to Benares. He was an ill-fated animal, that little horse of his: they called him an Arab pony, but no good caste animal would have been so vicious; he had one fault, a trick of biting at the foot of his rider—he bit off the toe of his former master, mortification ensued, and the man died. I often wished to mount him, but they would never allow me: the creature was very handsome, and remarkably well formed; doubtless a native would have found unlucky marks upon him—at that time I was ignorant respecting samāt, or unlucky marks on horses.