User:Mw8382/sandbox

This is my sandbox page! I will be using this sandbox to help learn and to practice editing an article, which is part of an assignment I'm working on for a college class. This is a safe environment where I am free to work and edit without having my work deleted as of yet.

Although the Vedas provide this advice to recent widows concerning grief and mourning, there is no mention of sati practices within the Vedas or Dharmaśāstra. However, some of the most recent smritis (the Vaisnava Dharmaśāstra and the Parasara Smriti, specifically) do offer opinions on these practices of self-immolation, although most smriti are quite contradictory on ideas about sati. The Vaisnava Dharmaśāstra suggests that

"When a woman's husband has died, she should either practice ascetic celibacy or ascend (the funeral pyre) after him."

Passages of the Parasara Smriti, much like those in the aforementioned Garuda Purana, also lend a great deal of support to sati practices, saying,

"If a woman adheres to a vow of ascetic celibacy (brahmacarya) 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."

In both passages, given the choice between ascetic celibacy and sati, the latter option, according to both the Parasara Smriti and Vaisnava Dharmaśāstra, is said to yield more otherworldly benefits for all involved parties.

While some smriti passages allow sati, others forbid the practice entirely. Vijñāneśvara (c.1076-1127), an early Dharmaśāstric scholar, claims that many smriti call for the prohibition of sati among Brahmin widows, but not among other social castes. Vijñāneśvara, quoting scriptures from Paithinasi and Angiras to support his argument, states:

"Due to Vedic injunction, a Brahmin woman should not follow her husband in death, but for the other social classes, tradition holds this to be the supreme Law of Women... when a woman of Brahmin caste follows her husband in death, by killing herself she leaders neither herself nor her husband to heaven."

However, exemplary of the contradictory opinion of the smriti on sati, in his Mitākṣarā, Vijñāneśvara goes on to state that, according to Yājñavalkya Smṛti, Brahmin women are technically only forbidden from performing sati on pyres other than those of their deceased husbands. Quoting the Yājñavalkya Smṛti, Vijñāneśvara states: "A Brahmin woman ought not to depart by ascending a separate pyre."