The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s4.t1.279

c2.s4.t1.279

[*] Both the warriors’ widows being provided for by the king (see above), and the Rāmāyaṇa’s word a ‘woman is called (scornfully) “a widow” just the same, though she be rich’ (R. iv. 22. 17), show that in general the widows of warriors, both in the Mahābhārata and in the Rāmāyaṇa, are not thought of as dying with their husbands. On the other hand, acquaintance with the practice of not allowing women to live when deprived of their husbands seems to me to be implied in the above-mentioned quotations. In the first case, a woman parted from her husband exclaims: ‘fie upon me, un-Aryan and bad wife that I am; since I live even for a moment when separated from him, and (in so doing) live an evil life’ (R. v. 26. 24–25). Compare the like words in the following quotation from our Epic, where the reference is (without any doubt) to widow-burning: *patihinā tu kā nārī satī jīvitum utsahet, evaṃ vilapya . . . pativratā sampradīptam praviveça hutāçanam* (xii. 148. 9). In both we have, it will be noticed, the same exposition of the *satī* (Anglo-English *suttee*) or ‘good wife.’ The practice touched probably only the chief wife of a king at first, and was afterwards extended to the wives of warriors not royal. It appears to be a southern custom. In Bali, according to Friederich, widow-burning is confined almost entirely to princely families, and here *satī* is distinguished from *bela*, the latter being a separate fire for the wife without the crease (which was used in *satī*), J. R. A. S., N. S., ix. The second quotation given above contains a reference to the same subject, and reads: ‘then they saw in astonishment the (doomed) city of Laṅkā, adorned like a woman that wishes to die and obtain final happiness’ (*dadṛçus te tadā laṅkāṃ vihasanto hy alaṃkṛtām, paççimāṃ çriyam āpannāṃ narīm iva mumūrṣatim*) R. vi. 15. 27. (Perhaps *paççimāṃ kriyām* is intended as in R. vi. 96. 10, meaning ‘the death-ceremony.’) Compare Mbh. xvi. 5. 4: *dadarça dvārakāṃ vīro mṛtanāthām iva striyam*. Final happiness is a wife’s portion when she dies with her husband. A late work like the Pār. G. S. both allows re-marriage and praises the *satī*, since she saves her husband from hell, and dwells in heaven as many years as she has hairs on her body (three and a half crores): iv. 28, 30–31. Compare also R. vi. 68. 33 ff.