Sati: A Historical Anthology

This anthology collects a wide selection of primary-source material, revealing a broad range of responses and attitudes, both Indian and foreign, on the concept and ritual of sati down the ages. Extracts from the Rig Veda and other Hindu scriptures, accounts by commentators as diverse as Battuta, Bernier, Pelsaert, Bentinck, Rammohan Roy, Sarojini Naidu and Gandhi, right up to feminist and other responses to the Deorala Sati of 1987, offer glimpses of the historical development of this rite, as well as the opinions, of travellers, colonizers, and today's thinkers thereon. The extensive introduction places the texts in perspective, and guides the readers through a range of sources disparate in time and place. Useful and enriching, the anthology delves into little-known aspects of sati and its abolition, such as the views of the Indian Princely States to the rite. Also included are accounts of a controversial sati that took place in Barh, Bihar, in 1927. Such accounts shed new light on the history of sati.