Back ستي Arabic সতীদাহ প্ৰথা AS Sati ritualı AZ Саці (звычай) BE सती (प्रथा) BH সতীদাহ Bengali/Bangla Sati BR Sati (hinduisme) Catalan Satí (obřad) Czech Сати (ритуал) CV

Sati (practice)

This article is about ritual suicide/murder. For other uses, see Sati (disambiguation).

A 19th-century painting depicting the act of sati

Sati was a historical practice in Hindu communities in which a widow sacrifices herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre.[1][2][3][4][5] 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. Greek sources from around 300 BCE make isolated mention of sati,[6][7][8] but it probably developed into a real fire sacrifice in the medieval era within the northwestern Rajput clans to which it initially remained limited,[9] to become more widespread during the late medieval era.[10][11][12]

The Sati of Ramabai, the wife of Peshwa Madhavrao I in 1772

During 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.[13] 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.[14] Between 1815 and 1818 the number of incidents of sati in Bengal doubled from 378 to 839. 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.[15][16][17] 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. 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."[18]

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.[19] 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.[note 1]

  1. ^ Weinberger-Thomas, Catherine (1999). Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 182–185. ISBN 978-0-226-88568-1. 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)
  2. ^ 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."
  3. ^ Gilmartin, Sophie (1997). "The Sati, the Bride, and the Widow: Sacrificial Woman in the Nineteenth Century". Victorian Literature and Culture. 25 (1): 141–158. doi:10.1017/S1060150300004678. JSTOR 25058378. S2CID 162954709. Suttee, or sati, is the obsolete Hindu practice in which a widow burns herself upon her husband's funeral pyre...
  4. ^ Sharma 2001, pp. 19–21.
  5. ^ Leslie 1993.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Pigoń2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Bosworth2005 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Dehejia 1994, p. 50-53.
  10. ^ Yang 2008, p. 21–23.
  11. ^ Brick 2010, pp. 205–206.
  12. ^ Oldenburg 1994, p. 162–167.
  13. ^ Asher, Catherine B.; Talbot, Cynthia (2006), India before Europe, Cambridge University Press, pp. 268–, ISBN 978-1-139-91561-8
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hardgrave1998 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Sharma 2001, pp. 6–7.
  16. ^ Marshman 1876, p. 374.
  17. ^ Dodwell 1932 p. 140.
  18. ^ Sartori, Andrew (2008). Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-226-73493-4.
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference Trial by fire was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Brule, Rachel E. (2020). Women, Power, and Property: The Paradox of Gender Equality Laws in India. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-108-83582-4. Quote: 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.


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