Note 811 — Chapter XIV

Max Müller, Professor Wilson, and H. J. Bushby, with several other Sanscrit students, prove that “Oriental scholars, both native and European, have shown that the rite of widow-burning was not only unsanctionable but imperatively forbidden by the earliest and most authoritative Hindu Scriptures” (“Widow-burning,” p. 21). See Max Müller’s “Comparative Mythology.” “Professor Wilson,” says Max Müller, “was the first to point out the falsification of the text and the change of ‘yonim agre’ into ‘yonim agne’ (womb of fire).... According to the hymns of the ‘Rig-Veda,’ and the Vaidic ceremonial contained in the ‘Grihya-Sûtras,’ the wife accompanies the corpse of the husband to the funeral pile, but she is there addressed with a verse taken from the ‘Rig-Veda,’ and ordered to leave her husband, and to return to the world of the living” (“Comparative Mythology,” p. 35).