ABSTRACT
Suttee took the form of burning alive; but in the Telugu country, including Vijayanagar, it was sometimes by burial alive. The weaver caste in some parts of India—in Tippera, for example—also practised suttee by burial. Irregularly, it was by drowning, especially when a woman had escaped from the pyre. In North India generally, including Bengal, she climbed on the pyre and sat or lay down, with her husband's head in her lap or on her breast; the dead man's eldest son or nearest relative then lit the pile. It was the custom in that island to burn the king's corpse separately from his wives, for each of whom a separate fire-pit was prepared. The scaffold was so constructed that it was tilted towards the pit if any wife hesitated. If any wife escaped from the pyre or refused to go to it, she was killed publicly with a "kriss," or privately if she was of royal blood.
