01-22-2006, 05:12 AM
<b>Excerpt #3 of 3</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><span style='color:purple'>Right to suicide</span>
That the British forbade the practice of sati was not a measure against murder, but against suicide. As was known, suicide is forbidden in Christianity; in some countries there was even the death penalty for attempts at suicide. In India however, people have always judged it differently.
...
Another legitimate ground for suicide in the hindu-tradition is quite universal: just like a minister resigns as a consequence of his political responsibility in some scandal or another, in the same way people can take their lives to thus clean up their own guilt in a catastrophic development. In this way, king Jayapala of Kabul took his own life in 1001 when he had not been capable of protecting his people against the muslim-invaders. He made a pyre, climbed it and set fire to it himself.
...
<span style='color:purple'>Judgement of sati</span>
Around 1800, about thirty years before the British administrator Lord Bentinck issued a ban on sati in Bengal, the hindu governments in some princely states had already issued orders to discourage sati, in particular the Maratha government in Sawantwadi and the Brahman government in Pune. With this, they concretised the anti-sati policy of the Maratha-queen Ahalyabai who passed away in 1795. Even within the hindu tradition there has been, at least since Medhatithiâs commentary on the Manu-Smriti (900 A.D.?), always a stream that rejected sati. The sjaktic or tantric stream was very explicit in this. The Mahanirvanatantra says: âThe woman who in her delusion climbs the pyre of her husband, shall go to hell.â (This sentence itself has however made the philologists suspect that this text was written or was completed around 1800, when sati had become a hot point of discussion.)
The reason for rejecting the sati is mainly that a woman, in the middle of the crisis which her husbandâs passing after all represents, hardly has a dayâs time to think over such a grave decision. A monk who on his old day decides to refuse food, has had a whole life of developing a stance of equanimity and non-attachment. His decision does not happen hastily or under emotional pressure.
....
It is completely logical that sati was not general practice on one hand, and yet on the other was still completely accepted in the case of the martial castes, especially the Rajputs. With the lower castes, a widow could in every respect remarry, among the brahmans continuing to live on alone as a female ascetic conformed with the ascetic caste-ethos, but with the martial castes it was passion and heroism that counted as pre-eminently honourable. That sati was considered as the appointed way for some and not for others, conformed with the hindu-pluralism, that posits that everyone has their own duty or code of honour (swadharma), corresponding to the their own talent/ability (swabhava).
...
Even without blowing new life into sati as a practice, people can from within the modern culture bring up a more honest recognition of the historic truth about sati ....
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Note: in Dutch, there is no "sh" except in words of foreign origin that have entered the language. This appears to be why Shiva etc. has been phonetically spelled with "Sj" in the original article - for the benefit of the (Dutch) readers. The translator seems not to have corrected this in the translation. Or perhaps he is unaware of how Shiva is written in English.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><span style='color:purple'>Right to suicide</span>
That the British forbade the practice of sati was not a measure against murder, but against suicide. As was known, suicide is forbidden in Christianity; in some countries there was even the death penalty for attempts at suicide. In India however, people have always judged it differently.
...
Another legitimate ground for suicide in the hindu-tradition is quite universal: just like a minister resigns as a consequence of his political responsibility in some scandal or another, in the same way people can take their lives to thus clean up their own guilt in a catastrophic development. In this way, king Jayapala of Kabul took his own life in 1001 when he had not been capable of protecting his people against the muslim-invaders. He made a pyre, climbed it and set fire to it himself.
...
<span style='color:purple'>Judgement of sati</span>
Around 1800, about thirty years before the British administrator Lord Bentinck issued a ban on sati in Bengal, the hindu governments in some princely states had already issued orders to discourage sati, in particular the Maratha government in Sawantwadi and the Brahman government in Pune. With this, they concretised the anti-sati policy of the Maratha-queen Ahalyabai who passed away in 1795. Even within the hindu tradition there has been, at least since Medhatithiâs commentary on the Manu-Smriti (900 A.D.?), always a stream that rejected sati. The sjaktic or tantric stream was very explicit in this. The Mahanirvanatantra says: âThe woman who in her delusion climbs the pyre of her husband, shall go to hell.â (This sentence itself has however made the philologists suspect that this text was written or was completed around 1800, when sati had become a hot point of discussion.)
The reason for rejecting the sati is mainly that a woman, in the middle of the crisis which her husbandâs passing after all represents, hardly has a dayâs time to think over such a grave decision. A monk who on his old day decides to refuse food, has had a whole life of developing a stance of equanimity and non-attachment. His decision does not happen hastily or under emotional pressure.
....
It is completely logical that sati was not general practice on one hand, and yet on the other was still completely accepted in the case of the martial castes, especially the Rajputs. With the lower castes, a widow could in every respect remarry, among the brahmans continuing to live on alone as a female ascetic conformed with the ascetic caste-ethos, but with the martial castes it was passion and heroism that counted as pre-eminently honourable. That sati was considered as the appointed way for some and not for others, conformed with the hindu-pluralism, that posits that everyone has their own duty or code of honour (swadharma), corresponding to the their own talent/ability (swabhava).
...
Even without blowing new life into sati as a practice, people can from within the modern culture bring up a more honest recognition of the historic truth about sati ....
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Note: in Dutch, there is no "sh" except in words of foreign origin that have entered the language. This appears to be why Shiva etc. has been phonetically spelled with "Sj" in the original article - for the benefit of the (Dutch) readers. The translator seems not to have corrected this in the translation. Or perhaps he is unaware of how Shiva is written in English.