________________
274
THE FUNERAL CEREMONIES
by Dr. Max Müller, and except in one or two particulars of no very great importance, our versions agree. In verse 8, which has the most important bearing upon the question of Satí, there is no difference; and its meaning is confirmed by other circumstances which I shall presently notice.
In the first place, however, we must take the seventh verse, as it has been supposed to authorise the practice of the burning of the widow. It has been, no doubt correctly, thus translated by Mr. Colebrooke: “Om. Let these women, not to be widowed, good wives adorned with collyrium, holding clarified butter, consign themselves to the fire. Immortal, not childless nor husbandless, excellent; let them pass into fire, whose original element is water." From the Rig Veda.-As. Res. IV, p. 213*.
Now this is evidently intended to be the same verse as the text before us, with the addition of the last clause, “whose element is water," for which we have no equivalent; the rest of the stanza may be readily compared and the variations accounted for.
Our verse has, "may these women not widows," avidhavá, a reading that at once overthrows the authority for cremation; as, if they are not widows, there is no necessity for their burning. A somewhat different version may be admitted, by interpreting the “words not to be widowed,” although even in this case it implies the absence of the only condition upon
* [Essays, p. 71.]
