The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c9.31

c9.31

The custom began to become popular in Kshatriya circles from *c.* 400 A. D. It is known to Vātsyāyana, Bhāsa, Kālidāsa and Śūdraka. Vātsyāyana points out (VI, 2, 53) how clever dancing girls gain ascendancy over the mind of their lovers by swearing that they would burn themselves on their funeral pyres. From the *Dūtaghaṭotkacha* and *Ūrubhaṅga* of Bhāsa, it appears that the dramatist differed from the Mahābhārata in holding that Uttarā, Duśśalā and Pauravī died on the funeral pyres of their husbands, Abhimanyu, Jayadratha and Duryodhana respectively. In the *Kumārasambhava* (Canto IV) Ratī is about to burn herself after her husband's death; it is only a voice from the heaven that dissuades her from her resolve. In the *Mṛichchhakaṭika* the wife of Chārudatta wants to burn herself before the arrival of the expected news of her husband's execution (Act X). To turn to historic cases of the period, we find that the wife of general Goparāja, who fell in 510 A. D. while fighting for his country against the Hūṇas, immolated herself on her husband's funeral pyre¹. In 606 A. D. the mother of King Harsha chose to predecease her husband by committing herself to flames, when it was declared that there was no chance of her husband's recovery. At about this time a Nepalese queen, named Rājyavatī, is also seen becoming a Satī.