HINDOOSTAN. The following extracts, from the letters of the Baptist missionaries, in India, will speak volumes, and might, if it were necessary, be corroborated by a thousand similar citations. At an early period of the Baptist mission to India, Dr. Carey communicated the following interesting account to a friend:--"As the burning of women with their husbands is one of the most singular and striking customs of this people, and also very ancient, as you will see by the _Reek Bede_, which contains a law relating to it, I shall begin with this. Having just read a Shanscrit book, called _Soordhee Sungraha_, which is a collection of laws from the various Shasters, arranged under their proper heads, I shall give you an extract from it, omitting some sentences, which are mere verbal repetitions. Otherwise, the translation may be depended on as exact. The words prefixed to some of the sentences are the names of the original books from which the extracts are made. "_Angeera._ After the husband's death, the virtuous wife who burns herself with him, [74] is like an Asoondhatee, [75] and will go to bliss.--If she be within one day's journey of the place where he dies, and indeed virtuous, the burning of his corpse shall be deferred one day for her arrival. "_Brahma Pooran_. If the husband die in another country, the virtuous wife shall take any of his effects; for instance, a sandal, and binding it on her thigh, shall enter the fire with it. [76] "_Reek, Bede._ If a wife thus burn with her husband, it is not suicide; and her relations shall observe three days' uncleanness for her; after which her _Shraddha_ [77] must he properly performed.--If she cannot come to the place, or does not receive an account of her husband's death, she shall wait the appointed ten days of uncleanness, [78] and may afterwards die in a separate fire.--If she die in a separate fire, three days' uncleanness will be observed; after which the _Pinda_ must be performed.--After the uncleanness on account of the husband is over, the _Shraddha_ must be performed according to the commandment.--Three days after his death, the _Dospinda_ [79] must be made, and after ten days the regular _Shraddha_. "_Goutam. Brahmmanee_ can only die with her husband, on which account she cannot burn in another fire. When a woman dies with her husband, the eldest son, or nearest relation, shall set fire to the pile; whose office also it is to perform the _Dospinda_, and all the obsequies. He who kindles the fire shall perform the _Dospinda_: [80] but her own son, or nearest relations, must perform the _Shraddha_.--If a woman burn separately, only three days' uncleanness will be observed for her; but if in the same fire ten days. "_Asouch Shunkar_. If another person die before the last day of uncleanness for a death or birth, then the uncleanness on account of the second person's death will be included in the first, and the time not lengthened out.