Word: jodhpur
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...fever spread to neighboring Rajasthan state, where anxious parents began marrying off every tot in sight. In Jodhpur district there were 10,000 marriages in which the brides and bridegrooms were between three and twelve years of age, while in Nagor district, mothers carried babies in arms seven times around the sacred fire to solemnize marital vows...
Siva, the many-ratured and versatile god of destruction, is doing a land-office business in Jodhpur these days. Ever since the Hindu widow Sugan Kunwar Singh flung herself sacrificially-and illegally-into the flames of her husband's funeral pyre last October (TIME, Nov. 1), Jodhpur has been on a religious binge. Self-styled holy men from miles around have swarmed into town to cash in on the popular fervor. Hawkers in the city's crowded bazaar are peddling ballads and poems extolling the virtues of suttee, the accepted name for the widow's sacrifice...
...Jodhpur's cops, under the agitated command of Police Superintendent Sobhagmal Surana, have been on constant guard at the city's cremation grounds to prevent further acts of suttee. The priest who had charge of the original Singh funeral is in jail awaiting trial for making a pyre built for two. But every day and night, crowds of worshipers throng the death site with offerings that range from coconuts to gold plate, and from all sides the halt, the near hopeless and the blind hobble into the city, seeking miracles and willing to pay the holy men generously...
...Sugan, resplendent in her wedding dress, wrenched free from those who restrained her and threw herself into the flames; others, that she sat calm and upright upon the unlit pyre, her husband's head cradled in her lap, while relatives kindled the faggots. "All we know," said the Jodhpur police, "is that the lady died in the fire. Her intention seems to have been a well-kept family secret...
...police got nowhere in their inquiries. Instead, reverent Rajasthanis thronged into Jodhpur to pay homage. By week's end 100,000 people had visited the tramped-out fire, some kneeling to scoop the dust, now sacred, into their mouths. "It was a great and noble act of suttee," observed one of Sugan's male relatives. "Her name will long be remembered...