Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c18.s3.t2.1.1

v2.c18.s3.t2.1.1

Duarte Barbosa gives us a vivid picture of sati in the first half of the sixteenth century. He speaks of the three classes of people in the Hindu Empire, each with "a very distinct rule of its own", and while describing the "principal of these" to which "the King, the great Lords, the knights and fighting men" belonged, he says: "...their sons inherit their estates: the women are bound by very ancient custom, when their husbands die, to burn themselves alive with their corpses, which are also burnt. This they do to honour the husband. If such a woman is poor and of low estate, when her husband dies she goes with him to the burning ground, 'where there is a great pit' in which a pile of wood burns. When the husband's body has been laid therein, and begins to burn, she throws herself of her own free will into the midst of the said fire, where both their bodies are reduced to ashes. But if she is a woman of high rank, rich, and with distinguished kindred, whether she be a young maid or an old woman, when her husband dies she accompanies the aforesaid corpse of her husband to the aforesaid burning ground, bewailing him; and there they dig a round pit, very wide and deep, which they fill with wood (and a great quantity of sandal wood therewith), and when they have kindled it, they lay the man's body therein, and it is burnt while she weeps greatly.