"generally the wives and servants offered themselves
voluntarily, and there are even instances of wives who
preferred suicide to prove their conjugal devotion when
they were prevented from descending to the grave with
the body of their consort." (Rivero and Tschudi, 186.)
Usually, too, superstition was called to aid to make the widows
docile. In Fiji, for instance, to quote Westermarck's summing up (125)
of several authorities, widows
"were either buried alive or strangled, often at their
own desire, because they believed that in this way
alone could they reach the realms of bliss, and that
she who met her death with the greatest devotedness
would become the favorite wife in the abode of spirits.
On the other hand, a widow who did not permit herself
to be killed was considered an adulteress."
To realize vividly how far widow-burning is from being an act of
voluntary wifely devotion one must read Abbé Dubois's account of the
matter (I., chap. _21_). He explains that, however chaste and devoted
a wife may have been during her husband's life, she is treated worse
than the lowest outcast if she wants to survive him. By a "voluntary"
death, on the contrary, she becomes "an illustrious victim of conjugal
attachment," and is "considered in the light of a deity." On the way
to the funeral pyre the accompanying multitude stretch out their hands
toward her in token of admiration. They behold her as already
translated into the paradise of Vishnu and seem to envy her happy lot.
The women run up to her to receive her blessing, and she knows that
afterward crowds of votaries will daily frequent her shrine. The
Brahmans compliment her on her heroism. (Sometimes drugs are
administered to stifle her fears.) She knows, too, that it is useless
to falter at the last moment, as a change of heart would be an eternal
disgrace, not only to herself but to her relatives, who, therefore,
stand around with sabres and rifles to _intimidate_ her. In short,
with satanic ingenuity, every possible appeal is made to her family
pride, vanity, longing for future bliss and divine honors after life,
enforced by the knowledge that if she lives earth will be a hell to
her, so that refusal is next to impossible. And this is the
much-vaunted "conjugal affection and fidelity" of Hindoo widows!