![]() ![]() Vedic symbolic practice Īccording 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. 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. The archaeologist Elena Efimovna Kuzmina has listed several parallels between the burial practices of the ancient Asiatic steppe Andronovo cultures (fl. It has been speculated that rituals such as widow sacrifice or widow burning have prehistoric roots. The origins and spread of the practice of sati are complex and much debated questions, without a general consensus. The Indian Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987 Part I, Section 2(c) defines sati as the act or rite itself. ![]() Satipratha is also, on occasion, used as a term signifying the custom of burning widows alive.Anvarohana ("ascension" to the pyre) is occasionally met, as well as satidaha as terms to designate the process.Sahagamana ("going with") or sahamarana ("dying with").Satimata denotes a venerated widow who committed sati.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.Sati designates therefore originally the woman, rather than the rite. 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. ![]() The term sati was originally interpreted as " chaste woman". Sati ( Sanskrit: सती / satī) is derived from the name of the goddess Sati, who self-immolated because she was unable to bear her father Daksha's humiliation of her and her husband Shiva. The modern laws have proved difficult to implement as of 2020, at least 250 sati temples existed in India in which prayer ceremonies, or pujas, were performed to glorify the avatar of a mother goddess who immolated herself on a husband's funeral pyre after hearing her father insult him prayers were also performed to the practice of a wife immolating herself alive on a deceased husband's funeral pyre. Isolated incidents of sati were recorded in India in the late-20th century, leading the Indian government to promulgate the Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987, criminalising the aiding or glorifying of sati. Ram Mohan Roy observed that when women allow themselves to be consigned to the funeral pyre of a deceased husband it results not just "from religious prejudices only", but, "also from witnessing the distress in which widows of the same rank in life are involved, and the insults and slights to which they are daily subject." Other legislation followed, countering what the British perceived to be interrelated issues involving violence against Hindu women, including the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856, Female Infanticide Prevention Act, 1870, and Age of Consent Act, 1891. Opposition to the practice of sati by evangelists like Carey, and by Hindu reformers such as 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. Between 18 the number of incidents of sati in Bengal doubled from 378 to 839. In the early 19th century, the British East India Company, in the process of extending its rule to most of India, initially tolerated the practice William Carey, a British Christian evangelist, noted 438 incidents within a 30-mile (48-km) radius of the capital, Calcutta, in 1803, despite its ban within Calcutta. ĭuring the early-modern Mughal period of 1526–1857, 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, who banned the practice. Greek sources from around 300 BCE make isolated mention of sati, but it probably developed into a real fire sacrifice in the medieval era within the northwestern Rajput clans to which it initially remained limited, to become more widespread during the late medieval era. A cold form of sati, or the neglect and casting out of Hindu widows, has been prevalent from ancient times. 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 diminished the rights of women, especially those to the inheritance of property. Sati or suttee was a historical practice in which a widow sacrifices herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre. A 19th-century painting depicting the act of sati ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |