Sati (Devanagari: सती, the feminine of sat "true"; also spelled suttee) refers to a funeral ritual within some Asian communities in which a recently widowed woman commits suicide by fire, typically on the husband's funeral pyre.
Mention of the practice can be dated back to the 4th century BCE,while evidence of practice by wives of dead kings only appears beginning between the 5th and 9th centuries CE. The practice is considered to have originated within the warrior aristocracy on the Indian subcontinent, gradually gaining in popularity from the 10th century CE and spreading to other groups from the 12th through 18th century CE. The practice has been attested to in a number of localities in Southeast Asia, such as in Indonesia.
The practice was outlawed by the British East India Company in 1829 in their territories in India (the collected statistics from their own regions suggesting an estimated 500–600 instances of sati per year), followed up by laws in the same directions by the authorities in the princely states of India in the ensuing decades, with a general ban for the whole of India issued by Queen Victoria in 1861. In Nepal, sati was not banned until 1920. The Indian Sati Prevention Act from 1988 further criminalised any type of aiding, abetting, and glorifying of sati.
The term is derived from the name of the goddess Sati, who self-immolated because she was unable to bear her father Daksha's humiliation to her husband Shiva.
The term sati was originally interpreted as "chaste woman". Sati appears in Hindi and Sanskrit texts, where it is synonymous with "good wife",the term suttee was commonly used by Anglo-Indian English writers.Sati designates therefore originally the woman, rather than the rite; the rite itself having technical names such as sahagamana ("going with") or sahamarana ("dying with"). Anvahorana ("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. Two other terms closely connected to sati are sativrata and satimata. Sativrata denotes the woman who, after her husband's death, has made the formal vow, vrat, to burn herself on his pyre. After her death on the pyre, she achieves the venerated status as a satimata[6]
The Indian Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987 Part I, Section 2(c) defines sati as the act or rite itself
Mention of the practice can be dated back to the 4th century BCE,while evidence of practice by wives of dead kings only appears beginning between the 5th and 9th centuries CE. The practice is considered to have originated within the warrior aristocracy on the Indian subcontinent, gradually gaining in popularity from the 10th century CE and spreading to other groups from the 12th through 18th century CE. The practice has been attested to in a number of localities in Southeast Asia, such as in Indonesia.
The practice was outlawed by the British East India Company in 1829 in their territories in India (the collected statistics from their own regions suggesting an estimated 500–600 instances of sati per year), followed up by laws in the same directions by the authorities in the princely states of India in the ensuing decades, with a general ban for the whole of India issued by Queen Victoria in 1861. In Nepal, sati was not banned until 1920. The Indian Sati Prevention Act from 1988 further criminalised any type of aiding, abetting, and glorifying of sati.
The term is derived from the name of the goddess Sati, who self-immolated because she was unable to bear her father Daksha's humiliation to her husband Shiva.
The term sati was originally interpreted as "chaste woman". Sati appears in Hindi and Sanskrit texts, where it is synonymous with "good wife",the term suttee was commonly used by Anglo-Indian English writers.Sati designates therefore originally the woman, rather than the rite; the rite itself having technical names such as sahagamana ("going with") or sahamarana ("dying with"). Anvahorana ("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. Two other terms closely connected to sati are sativrata and satimata. Sativrata denotes the woman who, after her husband's death, has made the formal vow, vrat, to burn herself on his pyre. After her death on the pyre, she achieves the venerated status as a satimata[6]
The Indian Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987 Part I, Section 2(c) defines sati as the act or rite itself
Few reliable records exist of the practice before the time of the Gupta empire, approximately 400 CE. After about this time, instances of sati began to be marked by inscribed memorial stones. According to Axel Michaels, the first clear proof of the practice is from Nepal in 464 CE, and in India from 510 CE In India, the earliest of these memorial stones are found in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh; the largest collections date from several centuries later and are found in Rajasthan. According to the Greek geographer Strabo, Aristobulus of Cassandreia, a Greek historian who traveled to India with the expedition of Alexander the Great, recorded that he had heard that among certain tribes widows were glad to burn along with their husbands. Those who declined to die were disgraced
A description of sati appears in the Greek 1st-century BCE historian Diodorus Siculus's account of the war fought in Iran between two of Alexander the Great's generals, Eumenesof Cardia and Antigonus Monophthalmus. In 317 BCE Eumenes' cosmopolitan army defeated that of Antigonus in the Battle of Paraitakene. Among the fallen was one Ceteus, the commander of Eumenes' Indian soldiers. Diodorus writes that Ceteus had been followed on campaign by his two wives, at his funeral the two wives competed for the honour of joining their husband on the pyre. After the older wife was found to be pregnant, Eumenes' generals ruled in favour of the younger. She was led to the pyre crowned in garlands to the hymns of her kinsfolk. The whole army then marched three times around the pyre before it was lit. According to Diodorus the practice of sati started because Indians married for love, unlike the Greeks who favoured marriages arranged by the parents. When inevitably many of these love marriages turned sour, the woman would often poison the husband and find a new lover. To end these murders, a law was therefore instituted that the widow should either join her husband in death or live in perpetual widowhood.Modern historians believe Diodorus' source for this episode was the eyewitness account of the now lost historian Hieronymus of Cardia. Hieronymus' explanation of the origin of sati appears to be his own composite, created from a variety of Indian traditions and practices to form a moral lesson upholding traditional Greek values.
In the 1886 published Hobson-Jobson, Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell mention the practice of Suttee (sati) as an early custom of Russians near Volga, tribes of Thracians in southeast Europe, and some tribes of Tonga and Fiji islands. Yule and Burnell also compiled a few dozen excerpts of historical descriptions of sati, the first being of Ceteus (or Keteus) mentioned above in 317 BCE, and then a few before the 9th century AD, where the widow of a king had the choice to burn with him or abstain. Most of the compiled list on sati, by Yule and Burnell, date from 1200 CE through the 1870s CE.
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