War in Ancient India c5.s1.50

c5.s1.50

As hundreds of soldiers were dead on the field, it was the custom to heap up the dead bodies on pyres, according to rank, and to get them cremated.⁴¹ It was then also a custom for the chaste wives of these fallen heroes to mount the funeral pyres of their husbands and get burned along with them.⁴² Only such wives were regarded as *satis*. But this was not always the case. In the *Rāmāyaṇa* we see that widows survived their husbands and led wretched and miserable lives⁴³ and from this Lassen concludes that there was no widow-burning in the *Rāmāyaṇa*.⁴⁴ The legal code allows both practices, thus respecting the customs and usages of different peoples.