Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c16.16

v2.c16.16

And yet widow-burning is really foreign to the Epic; the cases which do happen to be found are rare exceptions, and undoubtedly belong, at least in far the greatest part, to later revisions. The Rāmāyaṇa, tells of but one woman, a Brahman, that gives herself to be burnt in the flames along with her dead husband, and this in the regular way of satī (Rām., vii, 17.14). But the seventh book does not belong to the original poem, and this legend seems to be of especially late date. Now the Rāmāyaṇa also would have had opportunity enough for widow-burnings. But the conclusion that, because they are not found in this Epic, it is older than the Mahābh. is quite without justification. That the original form of the Mahābhārata as an Epic is from an earlier time than the original form of the Rāmāyaṇa is for me, at least, beyond any doubt. The whole spirit of the two poems, and many details, point even to a far greater age for the Mahābhārata. But this latter has had to suffer far more from revisions than has the poem of Rāma and Sītā, which from the very beginning was far more Brahmanic than the originally unpriestly, wholly warrior-like