The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c9.9

c9.9

Whatever the real reasons may have been, we find, as shown already, that the custom of sacrificing the wife at the husband’s death existed among the Aryans in the Indo-European period. By the time they entered India, it had, however, gone out of vogue. We do not find it mentioned in the Avesta. Nor is it referred to in the funeral hymns of the Ṛigveda, where it would certainly have been mentioned if it had been in existence. It is true that in the great controversy that raged after the legal prohibition of the Satī custom by Lord William Bentick, it was argued that a stanza in one of the Vedic funeral hymns gives a canonical sanction to the custom. The case, however, could be rendered plausible only by fraudulently changing the last word of the stanza from *agre* into *agneḥ*. The verse in question refers to women with their husbands living coming forward to annoint the corpse before it was consigned to flames, and contains no reference whatsoever to any widow immolating herself on her husband's funeral pyre¹.