The Rashtrakutas and their Times c21.146

c21.146

Merchant Sulaiman says :—Sometimes when the corpse of a king is burnt, his wives cast themselves upon the pile and burn themselves ; but it is for them to choose whether they will do so or not¹¹⁴. It will, therefore, appear that the Sati custom was not so common in the Deccan of our period even in the royal families as it was in Kashmir, where we find even unchaste queens like Jayamatī compelled to ascend the funeral pyre by the force of the public opinion.¹¹⁵ Nay, Kalhaṇa records the cases of concubines, servants, and sisters-in-law burning themselves along with dead kings.¹¹⁶ The inference that the Satī custom was not so common in the Deccan as it was in the north is further supported by the fact that though there are several inscribed virgals of our period, scattered all over Karnatak commemorating the deaths of village heroes who had died for their communities, mention of Satīs in these records is hardly to be seen. The only known case of Satī belonging to our period is that of Gundamabbe, one of the wives of Nāgadeva, a minister of Satyāśraya, who had no issue and who is known to have burnt herself with her husband when the latter was killed in war.¹¹⁷ Alberuni's statement that wives of kings had to burn themselves whether they wished it or not¹¹⁸ seems to have been based on the events in contemporary Kashmir and does not hold good of the Deccan. The statements of Sulaiman and Alberuni would further show that the custom was still mainly confined to the royal families and that it had not yet spread to the masses, as was the case in the later centuries.¹¹⁹