Crossposting <b>stuff Bharatavarsha, Ramana and Bodhi posted/wrote</b>:
1. Bharatavarsha posted the following, writing "Sati is well attested in the South as far back as Sangam times":
http://www.indiastar.com/venkat1.html
IndiaStar Review of Books
Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 by Romila Thapar, Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 2003
Reviewed by <b>Kalavai Venkat</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Yet, the most vivid recordings of this practice come from the Sangam Tamil literature. Evidently, a woman either joined her husband in his funeral pyre or burial urn, or led the austere life of a widow comparable to that of an ascetic. Most cases of Sati are spoken of in the martial context. It can be argued that when the king died not only his queen[s], but also his attendants committed sati. A queen chastises the courtiers for not [apparently] performing sati and tells them that she would rather join her beloved husband in the pyre than lead the spartan life of a widow. Not for her, says she, is the life of a widow who eats one meal of rice mixed with gingili oil and neem leaves, and who sleeps on the bare floor. May you not commit sati, the queen tells the courtiers, rather sarcastically, but for me the cold water of the lake is not different from the fire of the pyre.[129] And the very next song confirms that she did commit sati.
Another Tamil woman implores the potter to make her husband's burial urn large enough to hold the widow as well.[130] Tolkappiyam[131] says that the highest glory that a woman can aspire for is to join her husband's funeral pyre. Those ethos were emulated not only by the common women, but even Kambar, who appeared towards the end of the first millennium AD seems to have regarded sati quite highly, for he lets Mandodhari die at the battlefield once Ravana had fallen. N. Subramaniam has suggested[132] that even the great sage Tiruvalluvar alludes to the glory of a woman who performs sati. Manimekhalai has an interesting narrative[133] where the chaste Adhirai wrongly concludes that her trader husband had died and attempts to commit sati, but the fire refuses to engulf her. Then her husband returns and they live happily ever after! It is reflective of the belief of the social milieu that a chaste wife is the one who protects her husband.
A woman wasn't always allowed to commit sati. A Sangam song says[134] that after her son's father departed, the widow's head was tonsured and her bangles were removed. Then onwards, lily with rice became her staple food. So, scholars have argued[135] that those women, who had children, were rather expected to observe widowhood than commit sati. Interestingly, Manusmriti[136] doesn't prescribe sati even for those widows who have no offspring. It expects them to lead an ascetic life of honor. Its prescriptions, barring the tonsuring of a widow, are very similar to the descriptions of a widow's life that one finds in the Sangam poetry. It is evident that the wives of the deceased themselves looked down upon the plight of a widow, who had to tonsure her head, and rather thought of sati as a glorious option.[137] G. L. Hart draws[138] our attention to the prescriptions of Skanda Purana, which includes even the tonsuring of the widow; he points out that Skanda Purana's injunctions regards the vows of a widow exactly match the social mores of ancient Tamilnadu.
Why then, does Thapar falsely claim that sati is evidenced only in AD 510? Ignorance? None would doubt that. Is it also because this augments the usual Marxist rhetoric that the Gupta era supposedly led to the ascendancy of the Hindu orthodoxy, and hence the marginalizing of the woman, an ideal recipe that "could have" resulted in sati? In the same page, Thapar claims that with sati in place, the emerging debate over widow remarriage "could've been" nipped! Elsewhere,[139] she claims that cattle raids were very common in Peninsular India, and alleges that the commemorative stones depicting sati were meant to cultivate a heroic ethos in defense of the settlements not protected by the royal army! She provides no evidence. In the Marxist scheme of things, any Indian war has to be a "cattle raid" and practices like sati have to be reduced to utter banality. If she were right, then what does one do with all those instances of the women of royal households committing sati? Tonsuring of the widows continued even till a few decades ago among the Brahmins of Tamilnadu. The Brahmins are not known to have participated in the battlefield, until mid medieval times. Was this tonsuring of the Brahmin widows too a practice aimed at cultivating heroic ethos for defense against "cattle raids"?
Even during the Sangam times, sati was more an ideal than common practice. In every instance where it occurred, the widow performed sati willingly. The internal references in the poems regards the spartan living of the widows is abundant proof that most widows took to ascetic living. For all practical purposes, it was only the royalty that took to sati. This was practiced on a large scale only during the times of Islamic invasions. The Rajput women embraced the funeral pyre of their husbands, to avoid being raped and ending up in the harem of the Islamic aggressors. The Leftist historians, to whitewash the Islamic culpability, have often tried to project sati as a retrograde Hindu religious practice, which it wasn't. In fact, Manusmrti,[140] even prescribes the duties of a widow, but has no word on sati. No other Hindu law book either. Barring inevitable exceptions, it is evident that the women, who performed sati, did so joyfully. Friar Jordanus,[141] the Christian missionary, observes succinctly sometime in the early 1300s AD: "In this India, on the death of a noble, or of any people of substance, their bodies are burned; and eke their wives follow them alive to the fire, and, for the sake of worldly glory, and for the love of their husbands, and for eternal life, burn along with them, with as much joy as if they were going to be wedded; and those who do this have the higher repute for virtue and perfection among the rest. Wonderful! I have sometimes seen, for one dead man who was burnt, five living women take their places on the fire with him, and die with their dead." Despite his contempt for the Hindus and his missionary zeal, he was honest in his observation that sati wasn't forced.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
2. And Ramana wrote:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Also after Lord Krishna's death the Yadava women folks commit sati. The remaining women are escorted to Hastinapur by a weakened Arjuna and are waylaid and abducted by the Abhiras. So Ms Thapar is wrong. But then she doesn't think Mahabharat is a history despite it being an itihaas.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
3. Bodhi wrote about the existence of Sati in S India:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Marco Polo in his travelogue mentions overhearing about satI (by certain pANDyan women?) in tamil country. chAlukya-s also had the tradition.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1. Bharatavarsha posted the following, writing "Sati is well attested in the South as far back as Sangam times":
http://www.indiastar.com/venkat1.html
IndiaStar Review of Books
Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 by Romila Thapar, Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 2003
Reviewed by <b>Kalavai Venkat</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Yet, the most vivid recordings of this practice come from the Sangam Tamil literature. Evidently, a woman either joined her husband in his funeral pyre or burial urn, or led the austere life of a widow comparable to that of an ascetic. Most cases of Sati are spoken of in the martial context. It can be argued that when the king died not only his queen[s], but also his attendants committed sati. A queen chastises the courtiers for not [apparently] performing sati and tells them that she would rather join her beloved husband in the pyre than lead the spartan life of a widow. Not for her, says she, is the life of a widow who eats one meal of rice mixed with gingili oil and neem leaves, and who sleeps on the bare floor. May you not commit sati, the queen tells the courtiers, rather sarcastically, but for me the cold water of the lake is not different from the fire of the pyre.[129] And the very next song confirms that she did commit sati.
Another Tamil woman implores the potter to make her husband's burial urn large enough to hold the widow as well.[130] Tolkappiyam[131] says that the highest glory that a woman can aspire for is to join her husband's funeral pyre. Those ethos were emulated not only by the common women, but even Kambar, who appeared towards the end of the first millennium AD seems to have regarded sati quite highly, for he lets Mandodhari die at the battlefield once Ravana had fallen. N. Subramaniam has suggested[132] that even the great sage Tiruvalluvar alludes to the glory of a woman who performs sati. Manimekhalai has an interesting narrative[133] where the chaste Adhirai wrongly concludes that her trader husband had died and attempts to commit sati, but the fire refuses to engulf her. Then her husband returns and they live happily ever after! It is reflective of the belief of the social milieu that a chaste wife is the one who protects her husband.
A woman wasn't always allowed to commit sati. A Sangam song says[134] that after her son's father departed, the widow's head was tonsured and her bangles were removed. Then onwards, lily with rice became her staple food. So, scholars have argued[135] that those women, who had children, were rather expected to observe widowhood than commit sati. Interestingly, Manusmriti[136] doesn't prescribe sati even for those widows who have no offspring. It expects them to lead an ascetic life of honor. Its prescriptions, barring the tonsuring of a widow, are very similar to the descriptions of a widow's life that one finds in the Sangam poetry. It is evident that the wives of the deceased themselves looked down upon the plight of a widow, who had to tonsure her head, and rather thought of sati as a glorious option.[137] G. L. Hart draws[138] our attention to the prescriptions of Skanda Purana, which includes even the tonsuring of the widow; he points out that Skanda Purana's injunctions regards the vows of a widow exactly match the social mores of ancient Tamilnadu.
Why then, does Thapar falsely claim that sati is evidenced only in AD 510? Ignorance? None would doubt that. Is it also because this augments the usual Marxist rhetoric that the Gupta era supposedly led to the ascendancy of the Hindu orthodoxy, and hence the marginalizing of the woman, an ideal recipe that "could have" resulted in sati? In the same page, Thapar claims that with sati in place, the emerging debate over widow remarriage "could've been" nipped! Elsewhere,[139] she claims that cattle raids were very common in Peninsular India, and alleges that the commemorative stones depicting sati were meant to cultivate a heroic ethos in defense of the settlements not protected by the royal army! She provides no evidence. In the Marxist scheme of things, any Indian war has to be a "cattle raid" and practices like sati have to be reduced to utter banality. If she were right, then what does one do with all those instances of the women of royal households committing sati? Tonsuring of the widows continued even till a few decades ago among the Brahmins of Tamilnadu. The Brahmins are not known to have participated in the battlefield, until mid medieval times. Was this tonsuring of the Brahmin widows too a practice aimed at cultivating heroic ethos for defense against "cattle raids"?
Even during the Sangam times, sati was more an ideal than common practice. In every instance where it occurred, the widow performed sati willingly. The internal references in the poems regards the spartan living of the widows is abundant proof that most widows took to ascetic living. For all practical purposes, it was only the royalty that took to sati. This was practiced on a large scale only during the times of Islamic invasions. The Rajput women embraced the funeral pyre of their husbands, to avoid being raped and ending up in the harem of the Islamic aggressors. The Leftist historians, to whitewash the Islamic culpability, have often tried to project sati as a retrograde Hindu religious practice, which it wasn't. In fact, Manusmrti,[140] even prescribes the duties of a widow, but has no word on sati. No other Hindu law book either. Barring inevitable exceptions, it is evident that the women, who performed sati, did so joyfully. Friar Jordanus,[141] the Christian missionary, observes succinctly sometime in the early 1300s AD: "In this India, on the death of a noble, or of any people of substance, their bodies are burned; and eke their wives follow them alive to the fire, and, for the sake of worldly glory, and for the love of their husbands, and for eternal life, burn along with them, with as much joy as if they were going to be wedded; and those who do this have the higher repute for virtue and perfection among the rest. Wonderful! I have sometimes seen, for one dead man who was burnt, five living women take their places on the fire with him, and die with their dead." Despite his contempt for the Hindus and his missionary zeal, he was honest in his observation that sati wasn't forced.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
2. And Ramana wrote:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Also after Lord Krishna's death the Yadava women folks commit sati. The remaining women are escorted to Hastinapur by a weakened Arjuna and are waylaid and abducted by the Abhiras. So Ms Thapar is wrong. But then she doesn't think Mahabharat is a history despite it being an itihaas.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
3. Bodhi wrote about the existence of Sati in S India:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Marco Polo in his travelogue mentions overhearing about satI (by certain pANDyan women?) in tamil country. chAlukya-s also had the tradition.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->