In Europe, Christian clergy burnt alive girls suspected of being Satan-worshipping witches. In Arabia, the ‘People of the Ditch’ have been martyrs who selected demise by hearth reasonably than giving up Islam. The theatre of demise in issues of religion may be very a lot a part of human tradition. The apply of Sati — burning of Hindu widows — must be seen on this context.
In 1829, the East India Company handed a regulation banning Sati. Christian missionaries had lengthy highlighted this apply in European circles to argue that, regardless of its lofty philosophy, India was a barbaric land in want of civilisational rescue. Defying this ban, a decade later, the Sikh managed lands noticed the burning of 4 Rajput queens and seven slave women on the funeral pyre of Raja Ranjit Singh. A Kangra miniature portray was commissioned to commemorate this occasion.
In 1861, Michael Madhusudan Dutta wrote his well-known ballad Meghnad-Badh that valorised the sati-hood of Prameela, widow of Indrajit, daughter-in-law of Ravan, a narrative with roots within the 700-year-old Telugu Ranganatha Ramayana. Even Hindu social reformers, recognized for supporting the ban in opposition to Sati, praised this Bengali ballad as a literary masterpiece.
A sati-stone courting again to 1057 A.D. present in Belatoor village in Mysore district
Chastity at what value?
No one is aware of when the pan-Indian apply of warrior widows burning themselves with (sahagamana) or with out (anugamana) the corpse of their husband got here to be often known as ‘sati’ — a phrase meaning the chaste spouse. The inhuman apply was strongly linked to the assumption in fidelity-magic; {that a} lady who thinks of nobody however her husband had supernatural powers. She may accumulate water in unbaked pots, as within the story of Sati Renuka; she may cease the solar from rising, as within the story of Sati Shilavati; she may flip the Hindu Trinity into her infants, as within the story of Anasuya. Sati Savitri even saved her husband from the jaws of demise. So, it was assumed {that a} chaste spouse would defend her warrior husband from demise.
Vedic literature doesn’t converse of this apply. In the Rig Veda, a widow is made to lie subsequent to her husband’s corpse and then informed to understand the hand of one other man and return to the land of the residing. This might have impressed the apply of chadar-chadhana or ‘drape-offering’ by which widows in pastoral communities of North India have been remarried to family members of the husband. Similar practices are discovered within the Jewish Bible the place Tamar is compelled to marry her husband’s younger brother. Feminists noticed this type of remarriage as patriarchy, because the widow had no company right here.
A sati-stone at Korlai Fort in Maharashtra
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Brahmins and Rajputs frowned on remarriage as a ‘low’ caste customized seen amongst monkeys and demons of the Ramayana. A ‘high’ caste widow, who refused to burn herself on her husband’s pyre, was revered provided that she shaved her head, stripped her physique of ornamentation, ate meals with out salt or spices, and lived like a nun, deserted in temples of Mathura and Vrindavan.
Mira, a Rajput princess of the sixteenth century, embarrassed her family, when she refused to turn out to be Sati and as an alternative devoted herself to singing praises of Krishna in public. Hounded by family members, she disappeared mysteriously in Dwarka.
The status of demise
The earliest archaeological and epigraphic proof of widow immolation comes from round 1,600 years in the past, from Nepal and central India and western India — roughly from the interval when Satavahana kings managed the Godavari river basin. In a Tamil Sangam poem from this era, a widow says: ‘That funeral pyre of black twigs that frightens you is not fearful to me, who has her broad-shouldered husband. A lotus pond and an altar of flames are both the same to me’ (Purananuru, 246). In the Prakrit literature work, Gaha Sattasai (poem 407), additionally from this era, we’re informed how the flames have been doused by the sweat of the widow, who lovingly clung to her husband’s corpse.
Sati-stone present in Coimbatore
Around 1,300 years in the past, we discover the earliest Brahminical texts, the Parasara and Vishnu Dharma-shastra, endorsing this apply as a method of preserving chastity and making a path to paradise. But it was reserved for the warrior group. The status it granted made it widespread, as indicated by the widespread proliferation of sati-stones from Rajasthan via central India and Deccan to Odisha. The first king to oppose it formally was Muhammad Tughlaq within the 14th century. But monuments have been being erected to mark the spot of the sati sacrifice by Rajput and Maratha the Aristocracy even within the seventeenth and 18th centuries.
About 300 years in the past this apply was broadly adopted by Kulin Brahmins of Bengal. What made it alarming, nonetheless, was that together with polygamy, it was being rationalised by the elite priest group for childless baby widows — in service of caste purity. This is what the British clergymen reported in Europe to defame India and deliver in regards to the ban.
Devdutt Pattanaik is the writer of fifty books on mythology, artwork and tradition.
Published – March 13, 2025 01:15 pm IST
