"_Bishnoo Pooran_. If the husband die in war, only present uncleanness, or till bathing, will be observed for him: if, therefore, the wife burn with him only one night's uncleanness will be observed for her; but, if in a separate fire, three days; and in that case the husband's _Pinda_ will be at the end of three days.--If the husband and wife burn in one fire, they will obtain separate offerings of the _Shraddha_.--If a woman die with her husband voluntarily, the offerings to her, and all her obsequies will be equal to his.--If they die within a _Tithee_, or lunar day, the offerings will be made to both at the same time.--If the person be _Potect_, or sinful; that is, has killed a _Brahmman_, or drinks spirituous liquors, or has committed some sin in his former life, on account of which he is afflicted with elephantiasis, consumption, leprosy, &c. [81] all will be blotted out by his wife burning with him, after proper atonement has been made. [82]--A woman with a young child, or being pregnant, cannot burn with her husband.--If there be a proper person to educate the infant, she may be permitted to burn.--If any woman ascend the pile, and should afterward decline to burn, through love of life or earthly things, she shall perform the penance _Prazapatya_, and will then be free from sin.'" [83] The following statement is taken from the more recent communication of another of the Baptist missionaries to India:-- "Jan. 9, 1807. A person informing us that a woman was about to be burnt with the corpse of her husband near our house, I, with several of our brethren, hastened to the place; but, before we could arrive, the pile was in flames. It was a horrible sight. The most shocking indifference and levity appeared among those who were present: I never saw anything more brutal than their behaviour. The dreadful scene had not the least appearance of a religious ceremony, It resembled an abandoned rabble of boys in England, collected for the purpose of worrying to death a cat or a dog. A bamboo, perhaps twenty feet long, had been fastened at one end to a stake driven in the ground, and held down over the fire by men at the other. Such were the confusion, the levity, the bursts of brutal laughter, while the poor woman was burning alive before their eyes, that it seemed as if every spark of humanity was extinguished by this cruel superstition. That which added to the cruelty was, the smallness of the fire. It did not consist of so much wood as we consume in dressing a dinner: no, not this fire that was to consume the living and the dead! I saw the legs of the poor creature hanging out of the fire, while her body was in flames. After a while they took a bamboo, ten or twelve feet long, and stirred it, pushing and beating the half-consumed corpse, as you would repair a fire of green wood, by throwing the unconsumed pieces into the middle. Perceiving the legs hanging out, they beat them with the bamboo