Posted on: 11 August 2013

Painting; gouache, Sati Ceremony, Tanjore, 1800

Sati ceremony: self-immolation of a Hindu widow, with men and women mourning by a river.

The pictures made by Indian artists for the British in India are called Company paintings. This one depicts the practice of sati (suttee) or widow-burning. The word is the Sanskrit for 'good woman' or 'true wife'. It was applied to the Hindu widow who makes the supreme sacrifice by following her husband onto the funeral pyre. Although suppressed in the 19th century, isolated instances of sati still occur in India even today.

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No. There is a double standard. Some grieving husbands have died soon after losing thei rwives but nit at their own hands.

Patriarchal inhumanity...

There were rare instances of husbands committing sati. They are recorded in some inscriptions.

It had to be voluntary, that was the true system that got corrupted. Some spiritually evolved wife's spontaneously died on hearing the news their husbands had departed

By ensuring that the women who outlived their husbands lived a life of hell on earth, those scoundrels of those ages sometimes made 'sati' decision easier for the women :(

I shudder at d thought of it, unspeakabl shame to d hipocritical ways of d rotten minds !!!! Long back i read " shadow of the moon " there is graphic description of dis descipable ceremony in dh book &it haunted me for quiet atime..:(

if not sati the woman wastaken advantage of by her father in law,brothers in law or any other powerful man because a widow looses not only her husand but also the protection from other men. I am not condoning the practice of 'sati' but those poor women had no where to turn for support.