Looking at the sun, then rising before her over a long and beautiful reach of the Nerbudda river, she said calmly, 'My soul has been for five days with my husband's near that sun, nothing but my earthly frame is left; and this, I know, you will in time suffer to be mixed with the ashes of his in yonder pit, because it is not in your nature or usage wantonly to prolong the miseries of a poor old woman'.
'Indeed, it is not,--my object and duty is to save and preserve them [_sic_]; and I am come to dissuade you from this idle purpose, to urge you to live, and to keep your family from the disgrace of being thought your murderers.' 'I am not afraid of their ever being so thought: they have all, like good children, done everything in their power to induce me to live among them; and, if I had done so, I know they would have loved and honoured me; but my duties to them have now ended.

I commit them all to your care, and I go to attend my husband, _Ummed Singh Upadhya_, with whose ashes on the funeral pile mine have been already three times mixed.'[5] This was the first time in her long life that she had ever pronounced the name of her husband, for in India no woman, high or low, ever pronounces the name of her husband,--she would consider it disrespectful towards him to do so; and it is often amusing to see their embarrassment when asked the question by any European gentleman.

They look right and left for some one to relieve them from the dilemma of appearing disrespectful either to the querist or to their absent husbands--they perceive that he is unacquainted with their duties on this point, and are afraid he will attribute their silence to disrespect.

They know that few European gentlemen are acquainted with them; and when women go into our courts of justice, or other places where they are liable to be asked the names of their husbands, they commonly take one of their children or some other relation with them to pronounce the words in their stead.

When the old lady named her husband, as she did with strong emphasis, and in a very deliberate manner, every one present was satisfied that she had resolved to die.