The Dharmasastric debate on widow-burning.

• Author: Brick, David
• Position: Essay

Although scholars have long devoted substantial attention to analyzing and discussing the Indian custom of widow-burning or sati as it is popularly known, they have made surprisingly little use of a body of writings that deals in a very explicit fashion with the ethical and theological underpinnings of this practice. These woefully neglected writings to which I refer are those of the Dharmasastra tradition, the branch of Brahmanical scholarship most directly concerned with delineating the bounds of right behavior and, therefore, a decidedly unsurprising place to find discussions of sati. (1) Significantly, despite their general neglect, Dharmasastric writings on widow-burning should be of considerable interest to anyone interested in the history of this practice, for they provide clear testimony of a long, intricate, and pan-Indian debate on its very validity. Thus, they can give valuable insights into the intellectual justifications offered for and against the custom of sati in pre-modern India. Equally importantly, they allow us to track major changes in orthodox Brahmanical opinion on the subject. It is the purpose of this article to give a detailed account of this crucial Dharmasastric debate, which, although erudite and esoteric in appearance, shows the ways in which the broader Brahmanical community gradually shifted its outlook toward sati over time from widespread rejection to unqualified acceptance.

Before proceeding, I will briefly comment on my use of terminology. In the preceding paragraph, I have used the Sanskrit word sati and the English word widow-burning to denote a custom, historically practiced in parts of India, whereby a woman would commit self-immolation after the death of her husband, according to ideal rules, by voluntarily mounting his funeral pyre. These words, however, are not those used in the Sanskrit texts under discussion. Instead, these texts use a number of different words for essentially the same practice: anugamana ('going after'), sahagamana ('going with'), anumarana ('dying after'), sahamarana ('dying with'), and anvarohana ('mounting after'). In order to remain faithful to the Sanskrit and avoid introducing undue connotations or confusion, I will henceforth use the term sahagamana in preference to sati, widow-burning, and the other equivalent Sanskrit words.

As is fairly well known, there is no mention of sahagamana whatsoever in either Vedic literature or any of the early Dharmasutras or Dharmasastras. (2) In fact, of all the extant smrtis on dharma, only those two that are very likely the youngest, namely, the Vaisnava Dharmasastra (also known as Visnu Smrti/Dharmasutra [ViDh]) and the Parasara Smrti, make any mention of sahagamana. The relevant passages of these works read as follows: (3)

mrte bhartari brahmacaryam tadanvarohanam va | (ViDh 25.14) When a woman's husband has died, she should either practice ascetic celibacy or ascend (the funeral pyre) after him. mrte bhartari ya nari brahmacaryavrate sthita | sa mrta labhate svargam yatha te brahmacarinah || tisrah kotyo 'rdhakoti ca yani romani manuse | tavatkalam vaset svarge bhartaram yanugacchati || vyalagrahi yatha vyalam balad uddharate bilat || evam stri patim uddhrtya tenaiva saha modate || (Parasara Smrti 4.29-31) If a woman adheres to a vow of ascetic celibacy (brahntacarya) after her husband has died, then when she dies, she obtains heaven, just like those who were celibate. Further, three and a half krores or however many hairs are on a human body--for that long a time (in years) a woman who follows her husband (in death) shall dwell in heaven. And just as a snake-catcher forcefully lifts up a snake out of its hole, so does this woman lift up her husband and then rejoices together with him. From these passages it is clear that the authors of these two quite late Dharmasastras regarded sahagamana as a meritorious alternative to ascetic celibacy (brahmacarya) for at least some widows. Moreover, both passages provide some slight evidence that their authors regarded sahagamana as the superior of these two alternatives. In the case of Parasara, this evidence consists of the fact that the otherworldly rewards of sahagamana are elaborated in far greater detail than those of ascetic celibacy, which would seem to imply that sahagamana is the more meritorious of the two options. (4) In the case of Visnu, this evidence consists of the fact that the text (25.14) lists sahagamana second as an alternative marked by the particle va ('or'). At first glance, this by itself might appear to tell us nothing. However, Kiparsky (1979) has convincingly demonstrated that in the Astadhyayi Panini uses the word va to mark the more preferable of two alternatives. In other words, va does not simply mean 'or' for Panini; it means 'or preferably'. Hence, if Visnu is here following Panini's particular usage of va, then he must consider sahagamana to be preferable to ascetic celibacy as an option for widows. Unfortunately, however, it is unclear whether or not he is in fact following Panini's precise usage here and, as a result, the issue must remain unresolved.

In any case, aside from these two passages from extant smrtis, an examination of the commentarial literature reveals a number of passages advocating sahagamana ascribed to authors of Dharmasastras that are no longer extant. Such authors include Angiras, Usanas, Paithinasi, Vyasa, Harita, and Brhaspati. (5) Taken together with the previous citations from Visnu (25.14) and Parasara (4.29-31), these passages constitute the entirety of the Dharmasastric injunctions regarding sahagamana. However, a complete account of the scriptural injunctions related to sahagamana must also include several passages from the Puranas and Sanskrit epics. (6)

Considering the complete absence of any mention of sahagamana in both Vedic literature and the earliest works of the Dharmasastra tradition, it seems reasonable to conclude that this practice first gained enough popularity within Brahmanical culture to warrant mention at approximately the time when Visnu, Parasara, Angiras, Usanas, etc. composed their works on dharma. Consequently, in order to establish the period during which sahagamana first became a recognized custom within orthodox Brahmanical culture, it is necessary to establish the provenances of these works. Unfortunately, however, the available evidence does not allow us to do this within very narrow limits.

Recently, Olivelle (2007; 2009: 4-15) has put forth a convincing argument that the Vaisnava Dharmasastra was written in Kashmir sometime between the sixth and ninth centuries C.E. It is, therefore, fairly certain that sahagamana was a Brahmanical custom current in at least parts of Kashmir during the second half of the first millennium. This point, however, is far less illuminating than one might hope, for Enrica Garzilli (1997) has put forth another fairly compelling case that as early as the first century B.C.E., sahagamana was a recognized practice in Kashmir among members of the Kathaka school of the Black Yajurveda, to which, significantly, the author of the Vaisnava Dharmasastra almost certainly belonged (Olivelle 2009: 5-7). Hence, the advocacy of sahagamana in Visnu may not stem from the fact that this was a relatively new custom that had become popular in the author's day, but instead reflect the author's rather unique cultural and regional background.

Consequently, one is forced to rely upon the other Dharmasastras that prescribe sahagamana in order to establish when the practice first gained substantial and widespread popularity within Brahmanical culture; and regarding the dates and provenances of these texts, almost nothing is known. Perhaps the best that can be said is that they were composed somewhere in India probably during the second half of the first millennium C.E. The reason for this broad dating is that, based upon a comparative examination of their contents, scholars generally consider these works to postdate the Vaisnava Dharmasastra and certainly not to predate it by many centuries. (7) In any case, it is clear from citations found in later commentaries that by the twelfth century these works and the practice of sahagamana were widely known to orthodox Brahmins throughout India. (8)

Importantly, however, not all smrti passages that mention sahagamana endorse the practice, for, beginning with Vijnanesvara (c. 1076-1127), authors working within the Dharmasastra tradition cite a number of authoritative scriptures that explicitly prohibit Brahmin widows from performing sahagamana. The Two most frequently cited of these are ascribed to Paithlnasi and Angiras. (9) They read as follows:

mrtanugamanam nasti brahmanya brahmasasanat | itaresam tu varnanam stridharmo 'yam parah smrtah || Due to Vedic injunction a Brahmin woman should not follow her husband in death, but for the other social classes tradition holds this to he the supreme Law of Women. ya stri brahmanajatiya mrtam patim anuvrajet | sa svargam atmaghatena natmanam na patim nayet || When a woman of Brahmin caste follows her husband in death, by killing herself she leads neither herself nor her husband to heaven. Although all medieval exegetes who cite these passages and others like them manage to greatly reduce their proscriptive scope, to a neutral reader their intention is clear: they issue a general prohibition against sahagamana in the case of Brahmin widows. Hence, they inform us that while their authors, who were undoubtedly Brahmins, had no specific objection to non-Brahmin widows performing sahagamana, they strongly objected to this practice among widows of their own social class. This, in turn, may be taken to suggest that sahagamana was well established among certain other social groups at the time these scriptures were composed, but still relatively new and, therefore, controversial amongst orthodox Brahmins. Thus, these smrti passages add further support to the thesis compellingly...