style="font-size:15px;"> The Siem commanded his ministers to pronounce judgement, and they with one accord proclaimed that he should be burned to11
death, without the performance [33]of any rites and that no hand should gather his bones for burial. In this decision all the throng acquiesced, for such was the law and the decree.
U Raitong received the verdict with indifference as one who had long known and become reconciled to his fate, but he asked one boon, and that was permission to build his own pyre and play a dirge for himself. The Siem and the people were astonished to hear him speak in clear tones instead of the blubbering manner in which he had always been known to speak. Nobody raised an objection to his request, so he received permission to build his own pyre and to play his own dirge.
Accordingly on the morrow U Raitong arose early and gathered a great pile of dry firewood and laid it carefully till the pyre was larg-er than the pyres built for the cremation of Siems and the great ones of the land. After finishing the pyre he returned to his lonely hut and divested himself of his filthy rags and arrayed himself in the fine garments which he used to wear in the hours of the night when he abandoned himself to music; he then took his sharati in his hand and sallied forth to his terrible doom. As he marched towards the pyre he played on his sharati, and the sound of his dirge was carried by the air to every dwelling in the village, and so beautiful was it and so enchanting, so full of wild pathos and woe, that it stirred every heart. People flocked after him, wondering at the changed appearance of U Raitong and fascinated by the marvellous and mysterious music such as they had never before heard, which arrested and charmed every ear.
When the procession reached the pyre, U Raitong stooped and lighted the dry logs without a shudder or a delay. Then once more he began to play on his sharati [34]and marched three times around the pyre, and as he marched he played such doleful and mournful melodies that his hearers raised their voices in a loud wail in sympathy, so that the wailing and the mourning at the pyre of the unfortunate U Raitong was more sincere and impressive than the mourning made for the greatest men in the country.
At the end of his third round U Raitong suddenly stopped his music, planted his sharati point downward in the earth, and leaped upon the burning pyre and perished.
While these events were taking place outside, the Mahadei remained a close prisoner in her room, and no whisper of what was transpiring was allowed to reach her. But her heart was heavy with apprehension for her lover, and when she heard the notes of a sharati she knew it could be none other than U Raitong, and that the secret had been discovered and that he was being sent to his doom.
As before, the notes of the sharati seemed to call her irresistibly, and with almost superhuman strength she burst open the door of her prison. Great as was her excitement and her desire to get away, she took precautions to cover her escape. Seeing a string of cowries with which her child had been playing, she hastily fastened them to the feet of a kitten that was in the room, so that whenever
the kitten moved the noise of the cowries jingling on the floor of the room would lead those outside to think that it was the Mahadei herself still moving about; then she sped forth to the hill in the direction of the sound of the sharati and the wailing. When she arrived at the pyre, U Raitong had just taken his fatal leap. She pushed her way [35]resolutely through the dense and wailing crowd, and before any one could anticipate her action she too had leaped into the flaming furnace to die by the side of her lover.
The Siem alone of all the people in the village had withstood the fascination of the dirge. He sat in his chamber morose and out-raged, brooding on his calamity. Just when the Mahadei was leaping into the flames a strange thing happened in the Siem's chamber--the head-cloth (tapmoh) of his wife was blown in a mysterious manner so that it fell at his feet although there was not enough breeze to cause a leaf to rustle. When the Siem saw it he said, "By this token my wife must be dead." Still hearing sounds coming from her room, he tried to take no heed of the omen. The foreboding, however, grew so strong that he got up to investigate, and when he opened the door of the room where the Mahadei had been imprisoned he found it empty, save for a kitten with a string of cowries fastened to its feet.
He knew instinctively whither she had gone, and in the hope of averting further scandal he hurried in her wake towards the pyre on the hill, but he was too late. When he arrived on the scene he found only her charred remains.
The news of the unparalleled devotion of the Mahadei to her lover spread abroad throughout the land and stirred the minds of men and women in all countries. The chaste wives of India, when they heard of it, said one to another, "We must not allow the unholy passion of an unchaste woman to become more famous than the sacred love of holy matrimony. Henceforth we will offer our bod-ies on the altar of death, on the pyre of our husbands, to prove our devotion and fidelity." Thus [36]originated the custom of suttee (wife-sacrifice) in many parts of India.
The Khasis were so impressed by the suitability of the sharati to express sorrow and grief that they have adopted that instrument ever since to play their dirges at times of cremation.
The sharati of U Raitong, which he planted in the earth as he was about to leap to his doom, took root, and a clump of bamboos
12
grew from it, distinguishable from all other bamboos by having their branches forking downwards. It is commonly maintained to this day that there are clumps of bamboos forking downwards to be found in plenty on the Hill of Raitong. [37]
[Contents] VII
The Tiger and the Monkeys
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