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BURNING OF HINDU WIDOWS.
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allusion whatever in either of those works to the Satí ceremonial. There remains therefore only the Taittiriya Sanhita of the Black Yajush to be examined: a part only of this has been printed by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, in their Bibliotheca Indica, and, as far as it goes, the same absence of allusion to the Satí occurs: so far, therefore, I have reason to believe, that the burning of widows was unknown to the Vedic period of Hindu ritual or belief.
That the Sútras of Áswalayana, Bharadwaja, and other Sútrakáras contain Sútras, or rules, for the cremation, is indisputable, but all Vedic scholars agree in considering these works as of much more recent date than the Sanhitá, or text period; they, therefore, prove nothing, and of still less weight are the Sahamarańa-vidhi or the Tattwas of Raghunandana, or other equally modern writings: the question is not whether there be any authorities at all for the practice, but whether such authority be discoverable in the original Vedic texts; there is no lack whatever of the former—I cannot yet positively deny, but I question the existence of the latter. To this Rádhákánt replies, “the most explicit (Vedic) authority is to be found in the two verses of the Aukhya Sákhá of the Taittiriya Sanlitá, quoted in the 84th anuváka of the Náráyaniya Upanishad,” of which he gives the literal translation as well as of the comment; unfavourably for his argument, the authority is liable to obvious exceptions. In the first place, the two verses are not cited di
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