Sati

Sati is the custom of widow burning or self-immolation where a widow shares her husband's funeral pyre upon his death. A sati could purify her husband's deadliest sins by burning with him. Her reward would be to live happily with him in heaven. Some of the earliest epigraphic evidence of sati in the Indian subcontinent was in the 5th century CE, although it took another 200 years before it was extolled. Sati was mostly practiced by Rajput Kshatriyas, the warrior caste. Therefore, most of the traditions surrounding sati are from Rajput traditions. Hindu scriptures do not demand sati, and there is an explicit proscription banning Brahmin widows from practicing it. Nevertheless, it did spread to nonwarrior castes later, probably as a means of elevating social status or for practical financial reasons. Sati has always been the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, the common meaning of sati is a chaste woman who is devoted to her husband whereas the custom of sati is called satipratha.

The mythology of the Goddess Sati is often evoked to explain the origins of the custom. In epic and Puranic sources, Sati is the wife of the God Shiva. When her father, Daksha, insults her husband by excluding him from a great sacrifice, she enters the fire herself. Thus, she displays her ultimate loyalty to her husband whose grief and anger at her death causes him to destroy Daksha's sacrifice. However, the link between satipratha and Sati's sacrifice seems tenuous at best because Shiva does not predecease Sati nor does she burn. The motif of self-immolation is also absent from various forms of the myth. In some, Sati withdraws into a yogic coma to give up her life.

Another, perhaps more feasible explanation is that the custom of sati had its origins in the practice of jauhar, where royal women collectively self-immolated to avoid capture after defeat in a war. Thus, the intent was not to follow husbands to their deaths; rather, it was to avoid rape and pillage by the victors. This entry describes the history and moderns uses of sati.