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This is how I described the act of Suttee in Phileas's Blog

From: Harry Hayfield <harryhayfield~at~googlemail.com>
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 22:30:34 -0000
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

It was the Parsee who suggested that we keep out of the way and given the
procession's motive that seemed a very sensible move as it appeared to be a
funeral procession with the poor person's widow being unable to deal with
the notion of her husband's death and having to be propped up by a couple of
guards. Or at least that's what I thought was the case until the Brigadier
informed me that what had actually passed us was a procession to celebrate
the act of suttee. Now at this point, my box of tricks pinged into life and
offered an explanation of the concept, but I could see that the Brigadier
was on the cusp of explaining it as well so decided to see how well the two
sources converged and they converged very nicely indeed.

"The Indian custom of a widow burning herself, either on the funeral pyre of
her dead husband or soon after his death. Sometimes, the wife was immolated
before the husband's expected death in battle, and it was then called
jauhar. The custom possibly has links with ancient beliefs that a man needed
his companions in the afterlife as well as in this world. During the
medieval period the hardships encountered by widows in traditional Hindu
society may have contributed to its spread. Numerous suttee stones,
memorials to the widows who died in this way, are found all over India, the
earliest dated AD 510. The first reference to the practice in a Sanskrit
text is in the Mahabharata, in which some queens undergo suttee; but it is
mentioned by the 1st-century-BC Greek author Diodorus Siculus in his account
of the Punjab in the 4th century BC. In the Muslim period the Rajputs
practiced jauhar to save women from dishonour by foes, most notably at
Chitorgarh. The larger incidence of suttee among the Brahmins of Bengal,
particularly during 1680-1830, was due indirectly to the Dayabhaga system of
law which prevailed in Bengal and which gave inheritance to widows. At its
best, suttee was committed voluntarily, but cases of compulsion, escape, and
rescue are known. The Mughal rulers took steps to prohibit it Humayun and
his son Akbar, and it was abolished in British India in 1829. Instances of
it continue to occur in Indian states"

And that was precisely what we had stumbled upon, but then it got worse as
the Parsee informed us that the widow in question had in fact been kidnapped
from a neighbouring state by the followers of the goddess Kali as the Rajah
(whose body the procession was following) was a firm believer in the deity.

"Kali is a major Hindu goddess whose iconography, cult, and mythology
commonly associate her with death, sexuality, violence, and, paradoxically
in some of her later historical appearances, motherly love. Although
depicted in many forms throughout South Asia, Kali is most often
characterized as a black or blue goddess, partially or completely naked,
with a long lolling tongue, a skirt or girdle of human arms, a necklace of
decapitated heads, and multiple arms. She is often depicted standing or
dancing on her husband, the god Shiva, who lies prostrate beneath her. Kali
was originally most likely a deity of the tribal and mountain cultures of
South Asia who was gradually appropriated and transformed, if never quite
tamed, by the more traditional and public pan-Indian Sanskritic traditions.
She makes her first major appearance in Sanskrit culture in the
Devi-Mahatmya ("The Greatness of the Goddess") where she springs from the
angry brow of the goddess Durga to slay the demon Raktabija. Her paradoxical
nature, deeds of violence and grace, and ecstatic secrets have since then
been displayed, encoded, and meditated on in a wide range of Sanskrit,
vernacular, and artistic media (Puranas, Tantras, philosophical treatises,
meditation manuals, sculpture, ritual theatre, vernacular songs) up to the
present. Kali's cult has been particularly popular at different points of
Indian history in Kashmir, Kerala, South India, Bengal, and Assam. She has
thus inhabited a space "on the edges" of the subcontinent and culture in
both a geographic and a doctrinal sense"

In other words, a very nasty piece of work indeed. So I said something that
seemed to take everyone by surprise and suggested that we rescue the poor
lady, and that's what we are doing right now.

Received on Sun 06 Dec 2009 - 00:30:44 IST

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