News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-12-09
THE RITE OF JOHUR.
An Awful Sacrifice Made by FanaticaI W o.
men in Old India.
IA Hindoo in the Pail Mall Gazette

IA Hindoo in the Pail Mall Gazettel
In Reuters telegram of the 21st of
| October L read: "A repetition of the
,Iohur ordeal has occurred in a Brahmin
village near Neemuch, in Bengal: the
object being to avoid the Tonk Durbar
assessment. Thetwo victims calmly as
cended the funeral pyre, and bIavely
met death. The villagers afterwards
took their charred heads to Odeypore. !"
| Neemuch Is a town and British canton,
ment in the territory of Gwallor, and is
situated at a short distance from the
boundary separating that tract of coun-
try from the tate of Odeypore, in Raj
p otana. 1t is just where one would
expect the JOhur to take place, if any
| where; for it is essentially q Rajpoot
rite, like the sacrifice of widows and IN
fants. The present case is a remarkable
one; for Johur, in past history, was
never used to avoid assessment, and the
telegram does not say whether the vic
tins are male or female.
Johur is an awful rite. A whole tribe
may become extinct by it, as is seen by
several instances recorded in the history
of the Ra poot States. What it signifies
honor. The Raipoot is profoundly jeal-
Gus Of the honor of his women, and to
prevent their falling into the hands of
conquerors, then to be dealt with as was
often the Lase in the wars with the Ma
hometans, he has recourse to the Johur
that is to say, the immolation of every
female of the family. And the Rajpoot
woman gladly embraces such refuge
from pollution; or even if she were not
in fear of being forced away as a captive,
she would prefer it to living on as a
widow.
The loss of battle or the capture OF a
city during the Mahometan invasiOns
was usually the time when this dreadful
rite was practised. At the end of the
famed siege of Cheetore, the ancient
capital of the Rama of Odeypore, by Ala
udd1n, in 1903 the RajpoOt chief, after
an arduOus day, passed the night in
bordering the means by which he might
save from the general destruction one at
least of his twelve sons Eleven of
them fell during the next few days, and
when but one son remained to the r ma
he proclaimed the ,iohur. The funeral
pyre was lighted within subterranean
chambers where the suns rays had never
entered, and the defenders of Cheetore
beheld the queens, and their own wives
and daughters to the number of several
thousands, pass in procession to the fire.
] he beautiful Pudmani, the consort of
the Rama, who was believed to be the
chief object of attraction for the con-
quering Tartar, came last in the throng.
The door of the caverns closed; the fires !
ragged within; and the honor of the Raj |
poot women was saved. When after
wards Alla-uddin entered the capital on
the death of the Rama and his surviving |
son, who fell in the conflict, he found it |
strewn with the bodies of its defenders, |
while smoke yet issued from the recesses /,
where the women had persisted.
Again during the second siege of
Cheetore by Bahadoor, Shan of Gujrat in
1880, when the bravest had fallen in de- !
Tending the breach caused by his artil- |
lery tit was served by Portuguese adj |
The Johur-- was Proclaimed.
There was little time to build the pyre. |
Combustibles were heaped up in hurried |
ly-made hollows in the ground and |
magazines were placed around them,
The mother of the infaut prince led the
procession of willing victims to their
doom and 13, 900 females were thus i'm
molated at once
In the Johur on the occasion of Firoz
Shah's attack upon Jessulmir, some years
after the event above described, 16, 900
females were destroyed
The Johur was practised not only
when the foe was the lustful and blood
thirsty Tartar, there are also instances of
it in the intertribal wars of the Raipoots.
Numerous inscriptions on stone and on
brass, according to the psychologists,
record as the first token of victory the |
captive wives of the foe, and the law of |
Manu- with regard to female captives in
NIahomet on the same point.