The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [356]
There was much to be seen, for Gujerat is not only drenched in history, but is the legendary scene of the chief exploits and death of the god Khrishna, the Indian Apollo. Every hill and stream has its link with some mythological happening, and the land is strewn with the ruins of tombs and temples so ancient that the names of those who built them have long been forgotten. Among the memorials to the dead – the magnificient, pillared domes of the great and the sculptured slabs of humbler men – one curious motif attracted Ash's attention, for it appeared over and over again. A woman's arm, ornamented with intricately carved bracelets and armbands.
‘That?’ said Sarji in answer to a question. ‘Oh, it commemorates a suttee. A widow who burned herself on her husband's funeral pyre. It is a very old custom, one that your Government has forbidden – and rightly, I think. Though there are still those who would not agree with me. Yet I remember my grandfather, who was a learned and enlightened man, telling me that many thinkers, himself among them, believe that this practice arose through the error of a scribe when the laws were first put down in writing, many centuries ago. The original law, they say, laid down that when a man dies his body must be given to the fire and his widow must afterwards ‘go within the house’ – in other words, live in seclusion for the remainder of her life – but that a scribe, writing this down long after, left out the last two words by mistake, so that it came to be believed that ‘go within’ meant to go within the fire. Perhaps that is true; and if so it is as well that the Raj has given orders that the practice must cease, for to be burned alive is a cruel death, though many thousands upon thousands of our women have not flinched from it, but considered it an honour.’
‘And many more have been forced to endure it against their will, if even half the tales one hears are true,’ said Ash grimly.
Sarji shrugged. ‘Maybe. But then their lives would have been a burden to them had they lived, so perhaps they were better off dead; and you must not forget that she who becomes suttee becomes holy. Her name is honoured and her very ashes are venerated – look there.’ He pointed with his riding whip to where a vivid splash of colour glowed bright against the dark stone and the tangle of greenery.
Someone had draped a garland of fresh marigolds over one of the carved weather-worn arms that bore silent witness to the hideous death of a wife who had dutifully ‘completed a life of uninterrupted conjugal devotedness by the act of saha-gamana’, and accompanied her husband's corpse into the flames. The stone was half hidden by grass and creepers, but someone – another woman, surely? – had decked it with flowers, and though the afternoon was windless and very warm, Ash shivered, and said violently: ‘Well if we have done nothing else, at least we can mark up one thing to our credit – that we put a stop to that particular horror.’
Sarji shrugged again; which might have meant anything – or nothing – and he began to talk of other matters as they turned their horses and made for the open country.
The two went riding together at least once or twice a week, and often at weekends or holidays they would go on longer trips together, staying away for a night or two, and choosing a route at random. Sometimes to Patri and the shallow waters of the Rann of Kutch, where the air smells of salt and seaweed and the rotting fish-heads that the boatmen fling out on the shore for the gulls to dispose of. Sometimes east towards Baroda, the capital city of His Highness Siraji Rao, the Gaekwar, or south, to the Gulf of Cambay where the great rollers drive in from the Arabian Sea between those two outposts of the Portuguese Empire, Diu Island and Damman – and where, on several occasions, they found the cargo-boat Morala at anchor, and went on board to collogue with her owner, Captain Red Stiggins. But only when he was alone did Ash ride northward in