Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c18.s3.t2.4

v2.c18.s3.t2.4

Before we proceed with the accounts of other foreign travellers, we may estimate the value of Duarte Barbosa's narrative on the strength of his own evidence. His description is so realistic that one may accept it as genuine but for the fact that it contains certain inconsistencies. In one place he says that it was a very ancient custom which compelled the women to perform sati : " the women are bound by very ancient custom, when their husbands die, to burn themselves alive with their corpses which are also burnt"; and then he presently adds, "she throws herself of her own free will into the midst of the said fire ", suggesting thereby that there was some element of option that was allowed to the unfortunate women of the times. This latter idea is strengthened by Barbosa's other statement that "she does and says so firmly, and with such a cheerful countenance, that she seems not about to die". Evidently the women of Vijayanagara, victims as they were of an age-long orthodoxy and priest-craft, could put death to shame by assuming a cheerful countenance on such an awful occasion. This is, however, a point on which there may be a plurality of opinion. But Barbosa contradicts himself in his assertions. In one passage he tells us that sati was confined to the caste to which the King, the great lords, the knights and fighting men belonged; but at the end of his description he asserts that "it is the custom of all". As related elsewhere, the king, the lords, the fighting men and the knights of Vijayanagara never belonged to one class.¹ Moreover Barbosa assures us that this custom did not prevail among the Brahmans and the Jangamas or Lingāyats, nor among the Cheṭṭis.² Consequently, it could not have been the custom of all.