**2. Widows' Co-Cremation in Hindu India: Its Ritual Components**

First of all, the term *sat¯ı* (colonial English: suttee) has three basic meanings.8 Sat¯ı, as a proper name, is the name of a goddess (see Section 3); the term *sat¯ı* in general is a honorific term for a married woman, a term that gives her a saintly quality; and it is a colonial term for the practice of a widow's self-chosen death on her deceased husband's funeral pyre. Our main focus was on the third, although the first two may occasionally enter the stage.

In order to present the ritual procedure of widow-burning in its ritual components we must understand the centrality and drama of ritual sacrifice in Hindu traditions. In Hindu cosmogony, one of the most persisting images of creation is through sacrifice. Fire sacrifice is what set the cosmos going, and fire sacrifice, endlessly repeated, is what keeps it going right now. A Hindu's last rite of passage (comprising of dying, death, and disposal) is traditionally acted out as a sacrificial process, and its name indicates this: *antyes.t.i*, one's final and ultimate sacrifice, a total gift, a sublime offering in which one's physical constituents break down through fire and return to the five basic elements. In a way, a widow who followed her husband onto the funeral pyre ritually re-enacted the same cosmogonic process and thereby more than doubled the efficacy of the act.

According to Hindu tradition, formally death is only real until the body is fully cremated, and *pra¯n. a* (the individual life force) has left through the top of the skull. The extremely brief period9 between the husband's physical death and the beginning or end of the open-air cremation process may also have marked the moment when a wife chose to follow him in death. This may have been merely a performative act—a symbolic gesture, just as we saw above, in *R. gveda* 10.18.7-8 and *Atharvaveda* 18.3.2-8—or real self-immolation. How this may have actually looked varies from description to description. One of the first eyewitness accounts was from members of Alexander the Great's armed forces in India. The Greeks provided us with the following account, through Strabo.10 In 316 or 317 BCE a Hindu general by the name of Keteus (originally Ketu, or even Khatri, i.e., a ks.atriya of the warrior class; see also Williams 1875, p. 258) had died in battle. One of his wives, eager to commit *sat¯ı*,

<sup>7</sup> There may have been a (hitherto unexposed) reason that the Hindu co-cremation case rather tracelessly disappeared from Grimes's later notes on ritual criticism. In the years right after Roop Kanwar's case, it had been a hot topic in wider western academic circles, but soon died down there. It might also be a matter of self-correction, of course. Compare Grimes (1988, 1990, 2002, 2013). See also our notes 2 and 31.

<sup>8</sup> *Sat¯ı*, as a term indicating broadly a 'good woman, faithful wife', has a totally different origin than the term *sadhv ¯ ¯ı*, although they ultimately mean the same. The first is derived from <sup>√</sup>sat (to be, to exist; one of the other derivations is *satya*, truth), whereas the latter is the feminine form of *sadhu ¯* (straight to the goal, right, successful, and indeed obedient). The crowd's expletive "sadhu, s ¯ adhu"—often accompanying the widow's procession to the pyre—means "well done, bravo!" ¯

<sup>9</sup> Ideally, the deceased should be cremated before the next dusk or dawn, whichever comes first.

<sup>10</sup> The transmission is generally believed to have been made through two participants in Alexander of Macedonia's expedition (c. 327 BCE), namely Aristobulus of Cassandreia and Onesicritus; both are referred to by Diodorus (first century BCE). These now lost works may still have been available to historian-geographer Strabo (c. 63 BCE–c. 23 CE), or at least in fragments.

was decked out and decorated in auspicious red as if for a wedding. She was escorted to the cremation ground by a train of female relatives, who sang songs in praise of her virtue and good fortune. Near the pyre, she took off her jewelry and other ornaments, which she distributed among the women of her cortège. Her brother (or brother-in-law?) helped her onto the pyre. Before the wood pyre was kindled, the entire army marched around it three times. The widow lay beside her husband, and as the flames seized her no sound of weakness or pain came from her lips. The account further emphasizes that some of the foreign spectators were moved by admiration for her heroic action, others could not help but pity her and consider it a savage custom, and again others praised her and counted themselves fortunate to witness this auspicious occasion.

Whether voluntary widow-burning at that time was exceptional or indeed occasionally practiced among women of the higher warrior classes, we cannot tell. However, what we can tell from this account is that some ritual components related here have remained more or less essential through millennia: (1) the widow's festive bridal attire, (2) her auspiciousness, (3) the songs of praise, (4) the more intimate cortège as contrasted with the great spectacle at the cremation site, (5) the distribution of her jewelry, and (6) the heroic serenity with which the bride greeted the flames. A seventh aspect, the mixed reception, is another constant, but we will come back to that only later on.

As a ritual repertoire, it shares details with other Hindu rites of passage, particularly the wedding. Ritually speaking, the woman was not a lamenting and lamentable widow, she was a joyful bride, eager to be reunited with her husband in death. Accounts may differ in details. In this case, we read that it was the army that made the triple circumambulation around the pyre, whereas this rite was normally performed by the eldest son first, and later by close relatives. In the Greek record it sounded like a kind of military salute (or tribute) to the deceased general, and may be a mere footnote to the widow's side of the story. A third variation can be found in the distribution of jewelry. In later accounts, especially those with a decidedly anti-Brahmanic stance, it was often reported that the Brahman priests received (or forcefully took) the jewelry as payment for their funerary services. A fourth variation can be found in the way the widow 'climbs' the pyre, 'jumps' into the fire, 'lies down next to her deceased husband', or 'sits down and lovingly places his head on her lap'. The greatest variation, however, must have been whether the widow acted of her own volition or was in some way talked round, drugged, coerced, or even forcefully dragged towards the pyre. In some reports it has been hinted at that a widow could become so terrified by the leaping flames that she struggled to escape, to her own shame and that of her family. In some colonial reports a further variation may have occurred: British officers may have arrived in time to cancel the entire procedure, drove the crowd of spectators apart, and fined the culprit (mostly the widow's in-laws), or, in quite a different register, rescued the lady in distress, for whom, naturally, the heroic rescuer developed an instant romantic crush, particularly when she happened to be young and beautiful. Although in most reports the procedure was described as synchronous—i.e., ideally the wife joined her husband on the pyre before the fire was lit, resulting in a proper *sahagamana*, respectively *sahamaran. a*—this obviously was not always the case.<sup>11</sup> Moreover, not every determined widow became a *sat¯ı* right away: there may have been practical reasons for a lapse of time intermittently, such as distance,<sup>12</sup> but it could also be that at the moment of hearing about her husband's death the newly widowed wife did not qualify, such as in case she was under age, pregnant, or had small children. In such a situation, she could solemnly declare that she would postpone *sat¯ı* until she would formally qualify. This formal declaration of ritual intent was a crucial part of any proper Hindu co-cremation. Any sacrificial ritual in Hinduism is only valid if it has been preceded by this formal declaration of intent: *sam. kalpa*. In a way this ritual requirement

<sup>11</sup> *Saha*- means along with, in the sense of together. Some contemporary authors imply that the proper term to be applied when there is no synchronicity (but instead an obvious time difference) would be *anu*-, meaning along with, but in the sense

of after: *anugamana, anumaran. <sup>a</sup>*. <sup>12</sup> The Greek report makes the impression of synchronicity. This would imply that the Indian army had allowed spouses to accompany their highly placed husbands on military tours.

could make or break a co-cremation, as the widow needed to speak out the formula in person. Apart from its otherworldly consequences, this could imply two things: in case of its omission the entire procedure could later on be assessed as invalid, and therefore condemned as either suicide or homicide; and secondly, it could be assessed as invalid because of coercion, force, the use of opium to drug the widow's senses, or indecent haste.
