Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

SELF IMMOLATION.

CALCUTTA, JAN. 10, 1811.-A Suttee took place in the vicinity of Calcutta on Sunday last, which deserves to be noticed from two considerations :-First, as it is the only instance of this kind of self-immolation that has occurred in the neighborhood of Calcutta for several months past ; a fact which affords satisfactory evidence that this custom, so abhorrent to nature and to reason, is passing into disuse in this, the most populous part of Bengal; and secondly, this Suttee is noticeable from the age at which the victim to connubial veneration, devoted herself to death. Neederam Dutt, a Hindoo of the Coit caste, died on Sunday morning, after a short illness, at the age of eighty-one years. On his decease, his wife, who had attained her 71st year, forthwith declared her resolution to be burned with her husband, with whom she had lived in a state of uninterrupted happiness for sixty years. Accordingly at two o'clock, of the day of her husband's decease, she was placed in a palankeen, being too infirm to walk, and borne with the body of her husband to Cossipore, where the cheeta or funeral pile had been prepared. After ablution in the Hooghly, and the usual Brahminical ceremonies, she was laid upon the pile, her right arm passing under her husband's neck ; The signal being given, her Son applied the lighted torch, the pile caught the flame, and the pious widow was quickly placed beyond the reach of suffering.

That a young Hindoo Widow upon the death of a beloved husband, in whom centered her affections, and whom she regarded as the source of all her respectability and happiness ; that such a woman in the first paroxysms of grief. should resolve to comply with the prejudices of her religion and education, and voluntarily devote herself to death, is much less surprizing than that the same resolution should be formed by a woman of advanced age, whose affections are less acute, and whose sensibility must have been chilled by the lapse of years.