In early times in India, widows married and men belonging to one caste married widows of other castes. "A droll story is told of the daughter of a householder of Mâlava who married eleven husbands successively; and on the death of the eleventh husband the plucky widow would probably have welcomed a twelfth, but 'even the stones could not help laughing at her,' so she took to the life of an ascetic."[60] But Manu laid down that a widow should never even mention the name of another man after her husband had died, and that a second husband was nowhere prescribed for virtuous women. A widower, whatever his age might be, and to whatever caste he might belong, could marry again; but a woman of the Brahminical caste, whether she ever lived with her husband or not, was not allowed again to enter the married state. Sad was the state of these widows, for they were cast out of society, but however despised they might have been, if one remarried her lot became even worse, for she was shunned absolutely by every honest and respectable person. "I once witnessed amongst the _Gollavarus_, or shepherds, an instance of even greater severity. A marriage had been arranged, and, in the presence of the family concerned, certain ceremonies which were equivalent to betrothal amongst ourselves had taken place. Before the actual celebration of the marriage, which was fixed for a considerable time afterwards, the bridegroom died. The parents of the girl, who was very young and pretty, thereupon married her to another man. This was in direct violation of the custom of the caste, which condemns to perpetual widowhood girls thus betrothed, even when, as in this case, the future bridegroom dies before marriage has been consummated. The consequence was that all the persons who had taken part in the second ceremony were expelled from caste, and nobody would contract marriage or have any intercourse whatever with them. A long time afterwards I met several of them, well advanced in age, who had been for this reason alone unable to obtain husbands or wives, as the case might be."[61] Suttee is the name given to the act of a woman immolating herself upon the funeral pile with the body of her deceased husband. This was not practiced in the early times of India, yet it was quite old as it was known from the time of Alexander, and even earlier. It continued down till the nineteenth century, when a noted Hindu, Raja Ram Mohun Roy, got up such an agitation against it that Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General of India, enacted a law in 1829, which prohibited suttee within British dominion and made all assistance, aid, or participation in any act of it to be murder and punishable with death. But it did not fully cease till near the middle of the century.