daughter in marriage except for very large sums of money. In such cases the girl is considered as dead by her own family.
Daughters and their issue were in all cases held incompetent to inherit, as, if this had been allowed in a society in which girls were always married as soon as they reached puberty, estates would have passed out of the possession of the original family.
The practice of Satí, or widow-burning, was common in the case of chiefs of high degree, when the women were not allowed to claim their privilege of re-marriage, and it was often extended to the female servants and concubines of the deceased. When Mahárájá Ranjít Singh died one of his wives, Mahtab Devi, was burnt with him[1], and three ladies of his zenána of the rank of Ráni. On the funeral pile of his son, Mahárájá Kharak Singh, one of his chadar dálna wives, a beautiful woman named Isar Kour, was burnt. She was unwilling to be a Satí; and it is said that she was forced to burn by the minister Rájá Dhyán Singh. Two of the wives of Nao Nihál Singh, the grandson of Ranjít Singh, became Satís. The last two widow-burnings in the Punjab were remarkable as showing
- ↑ This lady was a Rájput, the natural daughter of Rájá Sansar Chand Katoch. The Satí was probably a voluntary one, for the proud Rájput women used to consider the disagreeable duty of burning themselves with their husbands a privilege attaching to their blue blood. When the handsome Rájá Suchet Singh, great uncle to the present Mahárájá of Kashmír, was killed at Lahore, his ten wives and the three hundred unmarried ladies of his zenána committed Satí, some at Lahore, 150 at Rámnagar, where his head was brought, and the others at Jammu or their own homes.
