History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v5.c72.189

v5.c72.189

The Garuḍapurāṇa here (II. 4. 91–100) waxes eloquent over the immolation of a wife on her husband’s funeral pyre, over the miraculous power of a *pativratā*, and states that a brāhmaṇa woman should not burn herself apart from her husband’s body (or after he is cremated), but that kṣatriya and other women may do so, that the practice of *satī* is common to all women even including chāṇḍāla women, but pregnant women or those that have young children should not do so and that a woman does not become free from the liability to be born again and again as a woman until she becomes a *Satī*.