’But still those who have them grumble, and say that the Government which caused them to be preserved should undertake to provide for their marriage.  Is it not so?’

’At first they grumbled a little, sir; but as the infants grew on their affections, they thought no more about it.’[16]

Gurcharan Baboo, the Principal of the little Jubbulpore College,[17] called upon me one forenoon, soon after this conversation.  He was educated in the Calcutta College; speaks and writes English exceedingly well; is tolerably well read in English literature, and is decidedly a thinking man.  After talking over the matter which caused his visit, I told him of the Lodhi woman’s burning herself with the Brahman banker at Sihora, and asked him what he thought of it.  He said that ’In all probability this woman had really been the wife of the Brahman in some former birth—­of which transposition a singular case had occurred in his own family.

’His great-grandfather had three wives, who all burnt themselves with his body.  While they were burning, a large serpent came up, and, ascending the pile, was burnt with them.  Soon after another came up, and did the same.  They were seen by the whole multitude, who were satisfied that they had been the wives of his great-grandfather in a former birth, and would become so again after this sacrifice.  When the “sraddh”, or funeral obsequies, were performed after the prescribed intervals,[18] the offerings and prayers were regularly made for six souls instead of four; and, to this day, every member of his family, and every Hindoo who had heard the story, believed that these two serpents had a just right to be considered among his ancestors, and to be prayed for accordingly in all “sraddh".’

A few days after this conversation with the Principal of the Jubbulpore College, I had a visit from Bholi Sukul, the present head of the Sihora banker’s family, and youngest brother of the Brahman with whose ashes the Lodhi woman burned herself.  I requested him to tell me all that he recollected about this singular suttee, and he did so as follows: 

’When my eldest brother, the father of the late Duli Sukul, who was so long a native collector under you in this district, died about twenty years ago at Sihora, a Lodhi woman, who resided two miles distant in the village of Khitoli, which has been held by our family for several generations, declared that she would burn herself with him on the funeral pile; that she had been his wife in three different births, had already burnt herself with him three times, and had to burn with him four times more.  She was then sixty years of age, and had a husband living [of] about the same age.  We were all astounded when she came forward with this story, and told her that it must be a mistake, as we were Brahmans, while she was a Lodhi.  She said that there was no mistake in the matter; that she, in the last birth, resided with my brother in the sacred city of Benares, and