My knowledge of Sanskrit is only slight, but there are others of my race who have had opportunity to translate the Sanskrit Vedas, and I have in writing what they found in them.

I warned you, when that information reached me, that your priests have been deliberately lying to you--that the Vedas say: 'Thrice-blessed is she who dies of a broken heart because her lord and master leaves her.' They say nothing, absolutely nothing, about suttee or its practice, which from the beginning has been a damnable invention of the priests.
But the practice of suttee has continued.

I have warned the government frequently, in writing, but for reasons which I do not profess to understand they have made no move as yet.

For that reason, and for no other, I have tried to be a thorn in your side, and will continue to try to be until this suttee ceases!" "Why," demanded Howrah, "since you are a foreigner with neither influence nor right, do you stay here and behold what you cannot change?
Does a snake lie sleeping on an ant-hill?
Does a woman watch the butchering of lambs?
Yet, do ant-hills cease to be, and are lambs not butchered?
Look the other way! Sleep softer in another place!" "I am a prisoner.

For months past my daughter and I have been prisoners to all intents and purposes, and you, Maharajah-sahib, have known it well.