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Editing Sati Practice page
Diodorus writes about the wives of Ceteus, the Indian captain of Eumenes, competing for burning themselves after his death in the Battle of Paraitakene (317 BCE). The younger one is permitted to mount the pyre. According to Didorus, Indians favoured love marriages, but many of them turned sour and wives poisoned husbands for their new lovers. Thus the practice was created to check these crimes. Modern historians believe Diodorus's source for this episode was the eyewitness account of the now lost historian Hieronymus of Cardia. Hieronymus' explanation of the origin of sati appears to be his own composite, created from a variety of Indian traditions and practices to form a moral lesson upholding traditional Greek values.

Sati was an honourable solution than being captured by Slavery
There are few known instances of Sati in the early times. Widow remarriage was accepted during the Buddhist period. There are no references to the existence of Sati practice in the Buddhist texts of.

Remarriage was accepted during Buddhist period By Susan Murcott book First Buddhist Women: Poems and Stories of Awakening page 112

The observance of Sati during the Greek conquests should be treated by historians as an isolated event. By By Sree Padma book Vicissitudes of the Goddess: Reconstructions of the Gramadevata page 217

'''Buddhist literature and the writings of Panini, Patanjali, Kautilya, Manu and others does not mention it. By edited by Anne Feldhaus, Professor of Religious Studies Anne Feldhaus Book Images of Women in Maharashtrian Literature and Religion page 173'''

The custom began only during 5th century  and became spread by 8th century By edited by Anne Feldhaus, Professor of Religious Studies Anne Feldhaus Book Images of Women in Maharashtrian Literature and Religion page 173

By Sree Padma Vicissitudes of the Goddess: Reconstructions of the Gramadevata

There are no references to Sati when Buddhist monks Faxian and Xuanzang visited India during 4th and 7th century. As late as Mauryan and Gupta period widow remarriage was possible but by medieval period the ban on remarriage had become a vogue. By Judith E. Walsh in the Brief History of India page 56

"There are few known instances of Sati in early times, no mention of the practice in Buddhist literature, and first known memorial to a sati was a pillar erected in memory of central Indian queen in 510 C.E - Historical Dictionary of India By Surjit Mansingh page 558

No reference to Sati in A record of the Buddhist religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago (A.D.671-695)...

The widow women were exposed to the lust of the feudal overlords. Their insecurity increased after the demise of their husbands. This compulsion which was resultant of a particular age by far the most important reason or the prevalence of Sati during the Middle Ages. By  K Jamnadas book Decline and Fall of Buddhism: A Tragedy in Ancient India page 141

The women were expected to zealously safeguard their fidelity. To ensure this safety of honour and chastity against the Muslims the customs of Jauhar and Sati became current throughout the country." the book Social, Cultural, and Economic History of India: Medieval Age, S. C. Raychoudhry, Surjeet Publications, 1978 page 8

The practice of Sati amongst Rajput women also came into being at this time, reflecting on the only honourable solution to being captured, raped, enslaved by the enemy. book The Dreams Live On by Jean Max Dorinsville

Sati does not appear to have been enjoined upon the widows. It seems that it was dictated by considerations of marital affection and done voluntarily. ADMINISTRATION AND SOCIAL LIFE

UNDER VIJAYANAGAR by T.V.Mahalingam Page 260

William Jones a jury in 1785 British India writes that “the conditions of slaves within our jurisdiction is beyond imagination deplorable. Hardly a man or woman exists in a corner of this populous town who hath not at least one slave chlild. Many of you, I presume, have seen large boats filled with such children coming the river for open sale at Calcutta” book Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 1941, page 439

Sati became common after invasions from outside, during the wars among Kingdoms in India women and children were never captured as slaves. Widows preferred to become Sati than face a shameful fate. Muslim invaders captured thousands of Hindu women and sold them in the markets of the Middle East. book David Wallace goes to India by Jayesh Shah page 106

Golden Age narratives of the subcontinent in which the decline of Indian civilisation is said to have been hastened by the invasion of Muslims from Turkey and Persia, whose marauding hordes sexually assaulted Hindu women (among other alleged atrocities). by Associate Professor of Religion Eliza F Kent, Eliza F. Kent in the book Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India page 134

Nandy has identified two periods prior to the nineteenth century when the “epidemics” of the practice arose, owing to crises within the social order produced by foreign intrusions. One was in Vijayanagara, the great medieval kingdom in South India and the other was in Rajasthan both were attacked by Muslim Sultanates. In both cases, evidence about the extent of the custom and about the classes that practiced it is far from clear, since most accounts come from Muslim chroniclers or European travellers, neither of whom spoke had much access to its inner symbolism. edited by John Stratton Hawley in the book Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Wives in India page 151

Sati incidents by year
Over 60 percent of the 8124 recorded incidents of sati in 1829 involved upper caste Hindus living in Calcutta By Timothy Parsons The British Imperial Century, 1815-1914: A World History Perspective page 44

Sati became a political issue with the involvement of Christian missionaries
It also echoes the language of the British women abolitionists concerned with promoting the Christian education of the “heathen” women as their distinctive contribution to the foreign missionary enterprise in the book Women's Rights and Transatlantic Antislavery in the Era of Emancipation by Kathryn Kish Sklar, James Brewer Stewart page 128

By late eighteenth century sati had become a subject of discourse among the British elite. Mariana Starke’s drama The Widow of Malabar (1791) while showcased subjectivity, historians have agreed that the drama advanced national and religious prejudice indicating support for the imperial agenda. Envisioning the Indian Sati: Mariana Starke's "The Widow of Malabar" and Antoine Le Mierre's "La Veuve du Malabar" by Marie A. Dakessian page 111-112, Comparative Literature Studies Vol. 36, No. 2 (1999), pp. 110-130 (21 pages)

Representations of India 1740-1840, The Creation of India in the Colonial A Chatterjee Mariana Starke performed a play called “The Widow of Malabar” in 1791. As in most of abolitionist representations the plot was simple - the young, beautiful widow is driven towards the pyre by evil Brahmins and just when it seems all lost is rescued by a passing Englishmen. Page 113 Whereas on the contrary the author mentions of a real widow in Malabar who had remarried.[ edit]

The Christian missionary involvement for the abolition of the sati rite was only an offshoot of their grand design in India which was conversion of the country to Christianity. By Arvind Sharma, Ajit Ray and Alaka Hejib in the book Sati: Historical and Phenomenological Essays page 57

A Chatterjee, Representations of India 1740-1840, The Creation of India in the Colonial Imagination, Palgrave McMillan Publication. On page 118, the author quotes an article by an Officer of the British East India company in the New Monthly Magazine of 1820 where it is said Sati is not enjoined by the Hindu law but in fact a voluntary martyrdom. The officer goes on to state that the sati practice numbers were incorrect they would have been arrived by an extrapolation by the missionaries.

Hegemony of the religious texts, total indigenous submission to dictates by a section of Hindus. 66% of the incidents were only from three places surrounding Calcutta.

The same author quotes an article by an officer of East India company in the New Monthly Magazine of 1820 where it is said it is not enjoined by the Hindu law but in fact a voluntary martyrdom. The officer goes on to state that the sati practice numbers were incorrect they would have been arrived by an extrapolation by the missionaries. — page 118

Sati was not widespread in either Bengal or India, it occurred mostly in Gangetic region as Jauhar (a form of martyrdom during war) among the Rajputs. Nevertheless for Christian missionaries and officials like Bentinck, an evangelical Christian, sati symbolised all that was evil and barbaric in idolatrous Hinduism. By Judith E. Walsh A Brief History of India page 104

Re-presenting the Past: Women and History

Dirks, The Scandal of the Empire, page 23, where it can be seen that there was missionary pressure on British East India company on Sati practice

Although the Bengal Sati Regulation Act was passed in 1829, as I have mentioned previously by passing Anglo Hindu Law of 1772, assumed hegemony of scriptures and pundits had been elevated contrary to the practices which were based on local customs among every community. Lata Mani page 16. 1813 circular laid the framework for official policy on sati until it was outlawed in 1829.

Sati was a result of intrusion of British colonial influence on Indian society
Recent historical research suggests that the nineteenth century sati abolition movement might have created the myth of an existing practice where none existed. Not only was sati neither common nor wide spread, it could never be either continuously, for its truth lay in being heroic or exceptional. Bulk of the sati figures have been collected during the sati abolition movement in a province ruled by Bentinck. It is possible that a combination of ignorance and desire to prove the gravity of sati as a problem. Anand yang has shown that considerable proportion of the satis recorded for early nineteenth century Bengal were of women who committed suicide years after their husbands have died. This could have been because their lives had become intolerable. There was a recreation of a situation community in crisis. The incidents were found around Calcutta only. Warren Hastings has said that it was largely due to the ‘fanatic spirit roused by the divided state of feeling among the Hindus’. by Radha Kumar book The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights and Feminism in India 1800-1900 page 9 Zubaan Books, 1993

The practice had become mainly voluntary and took place generally during times of war. In fact in the beginning of eighteenth century it had become a rare occurrence. It was only towards the end of eighteenth century and in Bengal that the rite suddenly came to acquire popularity - Ashis Nandy, Sati: A Nineteenth Century Tale of Women, Violence and Protest in the book "At the Edge of Psychology". Oxford University Press. p.3-4

Ancient India, as it emerges from the normative dharma texts, seems thus to present a world quite different world from that of ‘Oriental despotism’, a term that the ancient Greeks used contemptuously to refer to the states of Asia and the Middle East, and particularly their enemy, the Persian empire, where ‘the king owned all and everyone was his slave’. […] When the British came to India they continued with the historical mistake of believing that India too was under ‘Oriental Despotism’, and this guided their thinking about land tenure. Trautmann, T.R. and Gurcharan Das (2016). Arthashastra : the science of wealth. Haryana, India: Portfolio Penguin. Chapter 1 ‌

After about 150 years of relatively famine free existence 1770 onwards at short intervals, large scale scarcities occurred. In 1770 alone about two-gifts of the all Bengalis died in famine. Ashis Nandy page 4

Book by WW Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, page 19-27 provides the context that exploitative land tax revenue maximisation policies of the British East India Company under a Muslim Internal Minister led to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770. About 1/3rd of the population of Bengal being wiped out extreme misery, rapid increase in slavery and selling of Women and Children, people resorting to cannibalism. Three generations of Bengalis suffered due to the famine. It is in this context that sati incidents increased

The Great Bengal Famine had occurred in 1770 due to the devastation from war and exploitative tax revenue maximisation policies of the rapacious British East India Company by Fredrik, Albritton Jonsson. Enlightenment's Frontier: The Scottish Highlands and the Origins of Environmentalism. Yale University Press. pp. 167–170. ISBN 978-0-300-16374-2.

Psychologist Ashis Nandy says that epidemic of Sati was a result of intrusion of British colonial influence on the Indian society - Nandy, Ashis (1980). Sati: A Nineteenth Century Tale of Women, Violence and Protest in the book "At the Edge of Psychology". Oxford University Press. p. 1.

Sixty three percent of the satis between 1815-1828 were committed in the Calcutta Division around Calcutta City - Late Mani, Contentious Traditions, page 22

Dalrymple, William. The East India Company: The original corporate raiders. Before long the province, already devastated by war, was struck down by the famine of 1769, then further ruined by high taxation. Company tax collectors were guilty of what today would be described as human rights violations. A senior official of the old Mughal regime in Bengal [or in other sources, an anonymous contemporary pamphleteer] wrote in his diaries: "Indians were tortured to disclose their treasure; cities, towns and villages ransacked; jaghirs and provinces purloined: these were the ‘delights’ and ‘religions’ of the directors and their servants

Sati had become a political issue during 18th century to legitimise colonial control and regulations by Hamilton, Douglas (2012). Slavery, Memory and Identity: National Representations and Global Legacies. p. 55.

"Sati had become a political issue in British India in the 1820s and was used by the colonial authorities to demonstrate moral superiority and to legitimise colonial control and regulations" Book by Douglas Hamilton Slavery, Memory and Identity: National Representations and Global Legacies page 55

Warren Hastings in 1772 asked 10 pandits to formulate the Hindu personal law with an assumption that Brahmanic and Islamic texts defined the rules of the social behaviour and assumption that pandits were the supreme authorities to interpret Hindu Shastras.

How the British meddled with the Sati: Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The debate on SATI in the Colonial India, University of Minnesota Press. In page 130-132, the author mentions that the British Government assumed hegemony of the religious texts, assumed the Hindus were submitting to the dictates of the pundits, based on which they asked the sole opinion of a pundit on the position of Sati in Shastras. To which the pundit responded that to the best of his knowledge it is permitted for women to perform the act. The British Government officials misinterpreted an inference as the final authority also they modified it to state that it was encouraged in the Shastras.

It is often assumed that Hindu society consists of many hierarchically ordered, professionally structured castes, into which the individual is born and to which he belongs all his life. However, there is no agreement about the nature, scope, and manifestations of castes. The term caste is used for so many social units that it is better to give it up altogether. The caste system is basically a feudal structure, not very different from medieval conditions in Europe. By Axel Michaels in Hinduism: Past and Present, Princeton University Press, page 160

How a castes multiplied: A few families or individuals probably separated from the main body, and having removed to another part of the country, either adopted a new name or were given one by their neighbours. It has been found impossible to obtain a uniform, authentic and complete list of castes composing each faction Lewis, Rice B (1897). Mysore: A gazetteer compiled for government, vol 1. Mysore: Archibald Constable & Co. page 222Lewis, Rice B (1897). Mysore: A gazetteer compiled for government, vol 1. Mysore: Archibald Constable & Co. page 222

Sati was a symbol of martyrdom for their land
Hero stones commemorate the deeds and lives of heroes, and sati stones commemorate the deaths of women. Heroes and satis are worshipped as natural counterparts. Religion and Rajput Women: The Ethic of Protection in Contemporary Narratives by By Lindsey Harlan, Professor of Religious Studies page 200

The act of self-immolation by cutting one’s head or by entering the fire or through some other means was also accepted as a heroic deed - Sati Memorial Stones of Vijayanagara Period - A Study by H.G.Rekha page 2110 in the History Research Journal Vol-5-Issue-6-November-December-2019

Mangalwadi, Vishal (2007). "India:Peril&Promise". In Stetson, Chuck (ed.). Creating the Better Hour: Lessons from William Wilberforce. Macon, GA: Stroud & Hall. pp. 140–141. ISBN 978-0979646218.

Seetharam Goyal

Dharampal

Koenrad Elst

David Foley

Micha Danino

Max Muller

The Position of Women in the Hindu Civilization by Altekar

Raj S Gandhi - Sati as a altruistic suicide

Arvind Sharma - Emile Durkheim suttee as suicide