“One day, when I was walking in a retired village, my attention was arrested by seeing two objects, at some distance before me, rolling in the mud. As I approached the spot, I found two females almost exhausted by fatigue. I learned that they had vowed to their goddess to roll in this manner from one temple to another. They had spent nearly a week, and had not accomplished one-half their journey. But no arguments, no remonstrances on my part could induce them to relinquish their undertaking. On leaving them, I indignantly expostulated with a learned Brahmin, who stood near by, and pointed to the miserable objects I had just left. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘this is worship exactly suited to the capacity of females. Let them alone; they are sincere. Of course, their worship will be accepted.’” [Illustration: HINDU WOMEN RESCUED FROM THEIR DEGRADATION.] THE BURNING OF WIDOWS COMMANDED BY MANU. Until a comparatively recent date, the fearful rite of Suttee has been practiced openly in India by all highcaste people. The ancient Vedas and the Institutes of Manu, which are second in authority, do not enjoin this rite; but the Shasters and Puranas, which hold about the same relation to the Vedas that the Jewish Talmud does to the Old Testament Scriptures, recommend the flames of the funeral pile as the widow’s sure road to eternal joy and peace. The following passages, selected from many similar ones, translated by our missionaries from the Puranas and Shasters, will be sufficient for our purpose: “If a woman who had despised her lord, or done what was contrary to his mind, should (even) from mercenary motives or fear, or from a suspension of the reasoning power, die with her husband, she shall be purged from all crimes. “As the snake-catcher draws the serpent from its hole, so she (no matter how great his sins), by burning, rescues her husband from hell, and rejoices with him. “The woman who expires on the funeral pile with her husband purifies the family of her father, her mother and her husband. If the husband be a Brahmincide, the greatest of all criminals, an ungrateful person, or a murderer of his friends, the wife, by burning with him, purges away his sins. “There is no virtue greater than a virtuous woman burning herself with her husband. “As long as a woman, in her successive transmigrations, should decline burning herself like a faithful wife on the same fire with her deceased lord, so long shall she not be exempted from springing to life again in the body of some female animal. “Though he, her husband, have sunk to the region of torment, be restrained in dreadful bonds, have reached the place of anguish, be seized by the imp of Luma (the Hindu Pluto, the god of the infernal regions), be exhausted of strength, and afflicted and tortured for his crimes, still, as a serpent-catcher unerringly drags a serpent from his hole, so does she draw her husband from hell, and ascends with him to Heaven by the power of devotion.