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OF THE HINDUS.
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which a woman's ascending the funeral pile depended; but avidhavá cannot be so rendered; it is present, not future. “Good wives” might be the rendering of supatni, although as an epithet it would be preferably “those having good husbands.” In either case the reason for burning is wanting. The collyrium or inguents, and the ghee, are much the same in both, but, in the next phrase, "consign themselves to the fire,”--the versions are widely at variance.
The text has, in the first place, merely samvisantu, -“let them enter," or as the commentator explains it, -"let them take their own place," swastúnam pravišantu ; in the second half we have, “let them go up," úrohantu; but it is not said, where to they are to go up; and here we have no doubt the origin of the error, if not a wilful alteration of the text,- the words are arohantu yonim agre, literally, “let them go up into the dwelling first;" the reading to which it has been altered is, úrohuntu yonim agneh, “let them go up to the place of the fire:” agneli, the genitive of agni, having been substituted for agre, locative of agra used adverbially: there is no doubt, however, that the latter is the correct reading, not only by the concurrence of the manuscripts, and the absence of the visarga, the sign of the genitive, but by the explanation given by the commentator Sáyana, himself a Brahman of distinguished rank and learning, and who explains it sarveshám prathamato griham ágachchhantu,-“let them come home first of all;" the phrase having reference, therefore, to some procession,
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