Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c18.s3.t5.11

v2.c18.s3.t5.11

One cannot determine how, in spite of a fair degree of freedom allowed by the lawgivers, *sahagamana* rose to the status of a social institution. That it was not always compulsory seems evident from the remarks of some of the foreign travellers whose evidence we have cited above. Even according to Barbosa the women, who wore a cheerful countenance on the awful occasion, made public the fact that, although they were "free to act", yet they burned themselves for the love they bore to their husbands. In pre-Vijayanagara times too, as Friar Jordanus, who visited India between A.D. 1321-3 tells us in the following passage, it may not have been compulsory. According to this eye-witness, who speaks of "Lesser India",—"In this India, on the death of a noble, or of any people of substance, their bodies are burned: and eke their wives follow them alive to the fire, and, for the sake of worldly glory, and for the love of their husbands, and for eternal life, burn along with them, with as much joy as if they were going to be wedded; and those who do this have the higher repute for virtue and perfection among the rest. Wonderful! I have sometimes seen, for one dead man who was burnt, five living women take their places on the fire with him, and die with their dead".³ If it is permissible to suppose that coercion may not have brought to bear on unfortunate women on all occasions, then, the concluding lines of the epigraph, dated A. D. 1445, already cited, recording the death of Bomma Gauḍa, may not be altogether incredible. His wife, the inscription relates, "with great desire (she) performed *sahagamana*".¹