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H.P. Blavatsky - From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan
Then those present at the burning were to rub their eyes with collyrium, and the Brahman to address to
them the following verse:
Approach, you married women, not widows,
With your husbands bring ghi and butter.
Let the mothers go up to the womb first,
Dressed in festive garments and costly adornments.
The line before the last was misinterpreted by the Brahmans in the most skillful way. In Sanskrit it reads
as follows:
Arohantu janayo yonim agre.....
Yonina agre literally means to the womb first. Having changed only one letter of the last word agre,
"first," in Sanskrit [script], the Brahmans wrote instead agneh, "fire's," in Sanskrit [script], and so
acquired the right to send the wretched widows yonina agneh - to the womb of fire. It is difficult to find
on the face of the world another such fiendish deception.
The Vedas never permitted the burning of the widows, and there is a place in Taittiriya-Aranyaka, of the
Yajur Veda, where the brother of the deceased, or his disciple, or even a trusted friend, is recommended
to say to the widow, whilst the pyre is set on fire: "Arise, O woman! do not lie down any more beside the
lifeless corpse; return to the world of the living, and become the wife of the one who holds you by the
hand, and is willing to be your husband." This verse shows that during the Vedic period the remarriage of
widows was allowed. Besides, in several places in the ancient books, pointed out to us by Swami
Dayanand, we found orders to the widows "to keep the ashes of the husband for several months after his
death and to perform over them certain final rituals."
However, in spite of the scandal created by Professor Wilson's discovery, and of the fact that the
Brahmans were put to shame before the double authority of the Vedas and of Manu, the custom of
centuries proved so strong that some pious Hindu women still burn themselves whenever they can. Not
more than two years ago the four widows of Yung-Bahadur, the chief minister of Nepal, insisted upon
being burned. Nepal is not under the British rule, and so the Anglo-Indian Government had no right to
interfere.
The Caves Of Bagh
At four o'clock in the morning we crossed the Vagrey and Girna, or rather, comme coloris local, Shiva
and Parvati. Probably, following the bad example of the average mortal husband and wife, this divine
couple were engaged in a quarrel, even at this early hour of the day. They were frightfully rough, and our
ferry, striking on something at the bottom, nearly upset us into the cold embrace of the god and his irate
better half.
Like all the cave temples of India, the Bagh caverns are dug out in the middle of a vertical rock - with the
intention, as it seems to me, of testing the limits of human patience. Taking into consideration that such a
height does not prevent either glamour or tigers reaching the caves, I cannot help thinking that the sole
aim of the ascetic builders was to tempt weak mortals into the sin of irritation by the inaccessibility of
their airy abodes. Seventy-two steps, cut out in the rock, and covered with thorny weeds and moss, are
the beginning of the ascent to the Bagh caves. Footmarks worn in the stone through centuries spoke of
the numberless pilgrims who had come here before us. The roughness of the steps, with deep holes here
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