The Colas c12.86

c12.86

*Satī* is frequently mentioned and was fairly common, but by no means universal. The celebrated utterance of the queen of Bhūta Pāṇḍya¹²¹ shows that it was more or less the general practice to dissuade women who had lost their husbands from immolating themselves and that the practice was by no means encouraged, much less enforced. There can be no manner of doubt, however, that the heroism and devotion of the *Satī* were applauded by public opinion. The true wife was indeed she who, at the death of her husband, entered his burning pyre, as if she were entering the cool water in a tank for bathing.¹²² Still, the more human, though less heroic, ideal that women were ordinarily expected to adopt is perhaps best expressed in the lines of the *Maṇimēkalai*,¹²³ which contrast the daily life of the family woman with that of the hetaera by saying that the former was under guard in her maidenhood as in her married state, and so also when her husband was no more, that she controlled her mind and did not meet strangers and that she offered worship to no god other than her wedded husband. The *Kuraḷ* is silent on *Satī*. To lead a life of religious devotion in widowhood was recognised as proper for women of all classes. The *Satī* then was the exception rather than the rule, and we do not hear of a single instance of an unwilling woman being forced to it.