Sati or suttee is a chiefly historical Hindu practice in which a widow burns alive on her deceased husband's funeral pyre, Quote: Between 1943 and 1987, some thirty women in Rajasthan (twenty-eight, according to official statistics) immolated themselves on their husband's funeral pyre. This figure probably falls short of the actual number. (p. 182) either voluntarily, by coercion,Feminist Spaces: Gender and Geography in a Global Context, Routledge, Ann M. Oberhauser, Jennifer L. Fluri, Risa Whitson, Sharlene Mollett. Quote: Sati is a practice in which widows commit suicide by burning themselves (or being burned) on their husband's funeral pyres. While this practice [...] is now obsolete, it was nonetheless at the center of discussions around Indian culture and tradition during the last century-and-a-half. or by a perception of the lack of satisfactory options for continuing to live. Although it is debated whether it received scriptural mention in early Hinduism, it has been linked to related Hindu practices in the Indo-Aryan-speaking regions of India, which have diminished the rights of women, especially those to the inheritance of property. Quote: "[I]n 1829, the British outlawed sati. However, the practice continued, and occurs even the present time. Although recorded cases of sati have diminished dramatically [...] Sati is a particularly relevant social practice because it is often used as a means to prevent inheritance of property by widows. In parallel, widows are also sometimes branded as witches – and subjected to violent expulsion from their homes – as a means to prevent their inheritance. A cold form of sati, or the neglect and casting out of Hindu widows, has been prevalent from ancient times.
Greek sources from around make isolated mention of sati, and Hindu inscriptions from 464 CE onward, common by the 11th century, record the practice of a real fire sacrifice. The first references to sati in Brahmin law-books appeared in the 7th century. It was widely recognised, but not universally accepted, by the 12th century. Records of sati exist throughout many time periods and regions. There were significant differences in different regions and among communities; however, figures are scarce and incomplete for the number of widows who died by sati before the advent of the British period.
In the early medieval era, sati was prevalent mainly among certain groups of feudal elites, but it became more widespread across Hindu social groups during the late medieval era. During the early-modern Mughal period, it was notably associated with elite Hindu Rajput clans in western India, marking one of the points of divergence between Hindu Rajputs and the Muslim Mughals, as Islam allows for widow remarriage. Several European travelogues of the period attest to Mughal opposition to sati, as well as efforts to restrict and regulate the practice among their Hindu subjects. Sati was also widespread in the Maratha country in 17th to early 19th centuries. It was historically less common in South India. Still, several instances were recorded in the region as well. In Bengal, sati was practised by the 12th century, and later increased among other castes such Bengali Brahmins between 1680 and 1830, after widows gained inheritance rights.
In the early 19th century, the British East India Company, in the process of extending its rule to most of India, initially tried to stop the practice; in 1803 Claudius Buchanan stated 275 cases, in 1804 he reported 115 cases that occurred between 15th April to 15th October. William Carey, a British evangelist misionary, noted 438 incidents within a 30-mile (48-km) radius of the capital, Calcutta, in 1803, despite its ban within Calcutta. Between 1815 and 1818, the number of documented sati incidents in the Bengal Presidency doubled, from 378 to 839. Opposition to the practice of sati by evangelists like Carey, and by Hindu reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy ultimately led the British Governor-General of India Lord William Bentinck to enact the Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829, declaring the practice of burning or burying alive of Hindu widows to be punishable by the criminal courts. Rejecting a petition by 800 orthodox Hindus against the ban, the Privy Council upheld the ban on Sati practice in 1832. Isolated incidents of sati were recorded in India in the late 20th century, leading the Government of India to promulgate the Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987, criminalising the aiding or glorifying of sati.
Etymology and usage The practice is named after the Hindu goddess Sati, who is believed to have self-immolated because she was unable to bear her father Daksha's humiliation of her and her husband Shiva. Quote: Between 1943 and 1987, some thirty women in Rajasthan (twenty-eight, according to official statistics) immolated themselves on their husband's funeral pyre. This figure probably falls short of the actual number. (p. 182)Feminist Spaces: Gender and Geography in a Global Context, Routledge, Ann M. Oberhauser, Jennifer L. Fluri, Risa Whitson, Sharlene Mollett. Quote: Sati is a practice in which widows commit suicide by burning themselves (or being burned) on their husband's funeral pyres. While this practice was never widespread, and is now obsolete, it was nonetheless at the center of discussions around Indian & Nepalese culture and tradition during the last century-and-a-half." The word was originally interpreted as 'chaste woman' and it appears in Hindi and Sanskrit texts where it is synonymous with 'good wife', therefore, initially referring to the woman, rather than the rite. The word suttee was commonly used by Anglo-Indian English writers. Variants are:
Sativrata, an uncommon and seldom used term, denotes the woman who makes a vow (vrata), to protect her husband while he is alive and then die with her husband. Satimata denotes a venerated widow who committed sati.
The rite itself had technical names: Sahagamana ('going with') or sahamarana ('dying with'). Anvarohana ('ascension' to the pyre) is occasionally met, as well as satidaha as terms to designate the process. Satipratha is also, on occasion, used as a term signifying the custom of burning widows alive.
The Indian Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987 Part I, Section 2(c) defines sati as the act or rite itself, of "burning or burying alive".
The spelling suttee is a phonetic spelling using 19th-century English orthography. The satī transliteration uses the more modern ISO/IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration), the academic standard for writing the Sanskrit language with the Latin alphabet system.
Origin and spread The origins and spread of the practice of sati are complex and much debated questions, without a general consensus. It has been speculated that rituals, such as widow sacrifice or widow burning, have prehistoric roots. The archaeologist Elena Efimovna Kuzmina has listed several parallels between the burial practices of the ancient Asiatic steppe Andronovo cultures () and the Vedic Age. She considers sati to be a largely symbolic double burial or a double cremation, a feature she argues is to be found in both cultures, with neither culture observing it strictly.
Vedic symbolic practice According to Romila Thapar, in the Vedic period, when "mores of the clan gave way to the norms of caste", wives were obliged to join in quite a few rituals but without much authority. A ritual with support in a Vedic text was a "symbolic self-immolation" which it is believed a widow of status needed to perform at the death of her husband, the widow subsequently marrying her husband's brother. In later centuries, the text was cited as the origin of Sati, with a variant reading allowing the authorities to insist that the widow sacrifice herself in reality by joining her deceased husband on the funeral pyre.
Anand A. Yang notes that the Rig Veda refers to a "mimetic ceremony" where a "widow lay on her husband's funeral pyre before it was lit but was raised from it by a male relative of her dead husband." According to Yang, the word agre, "to go forth", was (probably in the 16th century) mistranslated into agneh, "into the fire", to give Vedic sanction for sati.
Early medieval origins
Sati as the burning of a widow with her deceased husband seems to have been introduced in the pre-Gupta era, since 500 CE. Vidya Dehejia states that sati was forced into Indian society through Hindu cultural practice, and became active practice after 500 CE. According to Ashis Nandy, the practice became prevalent from vedas and declined to its elimination in the 17th century to gain resurgence in Bengal in the 18th century from British ethical involvement. Historian Roshen Dalal postulates that its mention in some of the Puranas indicates that it slowly grew in prevalence from 5th–7th century and later became an accepted custom around 1000 CE among those of higher classes, especially the Rajputs. One of the stanzas in the Mahabharata describes Madri's suicide by sati, but is likely an interpolation given that it has contradictions with the succeeding verses.
According to Dehejia, sati originated within the Kshatriya (warrior) aristocracy and remained mostly limited to the warrior class among Hindus. According to Thapar, the introduction and growth of the practice of sati as a forced fire sacrifice is related to new Kshatriyas, who forged their own culture and took some rules "rather literally", with a variant reading of the Veda turning the symbolic practice into the practice of pushing a widow and burning her with her husband. Thapar further points to the "subordination of women in patriarchal society", "changing 'systems of kinship, and "control over female sexuality" as factors in the rise of sati.
Medieval spread The practice of sati was emulated by those seeking to achieve high status of the royalty and the warriors as part of the process of Sanskritisation, but its spread was also related to the centuries of Islamic invasion and its expansion in South Asia, and to the hardship and marginalisation that widows endured.
Sati acquired an additional meaning as a means to preserve the honour of women whose men had been slain, akin to the practice of jauhar, with the ideologies of jauhar and sati reinforcing each other. Jauhar was originally a self-chosen death for queens and noblewomen facing defeat in war, and practised especially among the warrior Rajputs. Oldenburg posits that the enslavement of women by Greek conquerors may have started this practice, Oldenburg attested the Rajput practice of jauhar during wars, and notes that the kshatriyas or Rajput castes, not the Brahmins, were the most respected community in Rajasthan in north-west India, as they defended the land against invaders centuries before the coming of the Muslims. She proposes that Brahmins of the north-west copied Rajput practices, and transformed sati ideologically from the 'brave woman' into the 'good woman'. From those Brahmins, the practice spread to other non-warrior castes.