The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c9.59

c9.59

Recorded cases of Satīs in northern India outside Kashmir are very few during the period 700-1200 A. D. In this part of the country there were several Rajput dynasties ruling over different provinces at this time. We have got several official eulogies describing the military achievements and deeds of valour of the Pratīhāras, the Paramāras, the Chedis, the Chandellas, etc., but they rarely refer to any cases of Satīs, even when they refer to heroes dying on the battlefields. Only in the case of King Gāṅgaeyadeva of the Chedi dynasty an official epigraph tells us that he obtained salvation at Prayāga under the holy Vaṭa tree along with his hundred wives². The language used, however, suggests that the old king and his queens simultaneously committed religious suicide in the Ganges. The case therefore is not one of Satī. There is no doubt that mere negative evidence is not sufficient to prove the absence of a custom, but one cannot help thinking that if any queens had followed their consorts on the funeral pyre, their court panegyrists would certainly not have failed to glorify them. The conclusion therefore becomes irresistible that the Satī custom had not yet become appreciably common in the royal families of northern India. It had by this time, however, become a custom well recognised in Hinduism, for we find it travelling to the islands of Java, Sumatra and Bali along with Hindu emigrants.