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

From: Mahendra Singh <mahendra373~at~hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 18:03:53 -0500
To: jules verne list <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

Gosh, such a firestorm! I think Tom has hit the nail on the head better than I … it is the Parsee lady which is the most egregious error. It is not possible for a Parsee to do suttee (as Tom points out concerning their funerary rites) and moreover, it is highly unlikely that a 19th-century Hindu (probably Rajput) rajah would ever marry a Parsee. I believe Verne makes the Rajah a Brahmin, which would make such a marraige even more unlikely …

best
mahendra





From: harryhayfield~at~googlemail.com
To: jvf~at~Gilead.org.il
Subject: This is how I described the act of Suttee in Phileas's Blog
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 22:30:34 +0000












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 - 01:04:04 IST

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