Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India"At last, she arrives at the fatal end of the plank . . . and, with her hands crossed over her chest, falls straight downward, suspended for a moment in the air before being devoured by the burning pit that awaits her. . . ." This grisly 1829 account by Pierre Dubois demonstrates the usual European response to the Hindu custom of satis sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands—horror and revulsion. Yet to those of the Hindu faith, not least the satis themselves, this act signals the sati's sacredness and spiritual power. Ashes of Immortality attempts to see the satis through Hindu eyes, providing an extensive experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in northern India, where the state-banned practice of sati reemerged in the 1970s, as well as extensive textual analysis, Weinberger-Thomas constructs a radically new interpretation of satis. She shows that their self-immolation transcends gender, caste and class, region and history, representing for the Hindus a path to immortality. |
Contents
Nawang Rum and Madukara stab themselves | 6 |
A Question of Words | 11 |
Hero Stone vīrakkals | 15 |
Time Reckoned | 18 |
Sexual Colorings | 24 |
Painting of a sati Benares | 25 |
Jasvant Kanvar on the pyre March 12 1985 | 31 |
Devipura Rajasthan temple image of Jasvant Kanvar | 32 |
Hero stones Wadhwan | 56 |
sati stela | 57 |
The Rhetoric of Protest Suicide | 58 |
Stela showing a Charan piercing his jugular vein Rajasthan | 62 |
The Trammels of Resentment | 65 |
The burning pit | 71 |
Mahiṣāsuramardinī the Goddess as Slayer of the Buffalo Demon | 73 |
Chinnamastā the Decapitated Goddess | 75 |
Princess Aouda being brought to the pyre | 33 |
Blue as Blood | 34 |
Fire and the Fault of Karma | 45 |
Indian widow | 50 |
HANDPRINT DAGGER AND LEMON | 52 |
Satis handprints at Bikaner Fort Rajasthan | 53 |
Satīs handprints at the old city gates in Jodhpur Rajasthan | 54 |
Hero stones and sati stones at the Wadhwan Saurashtra Gujarat archaeological site | 55 |
The Fruits of Ones Acts | 77 |
DEATH IN THE TELLING | 85 |
Popular religious image of the Venerable Great Sati Rup Kanvar | 90 |
Memorial to Hem Kanvar at Devpuri Rajasthan 142 | 96 |
A Sati on the Shore of the Ganges Stavorinus | 97 |
A FOREWORD IN RETROSPECT | 106 |
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Common terms and phrases
according ancestors Bali Balinese become bela Bhairava Bhats and Charans bhūtas blood body Brahman burn caste ceremony Chinnamasta Chittorgarh cloth coconut color Courtesy Bibliothèque Nationale cremation cult dagger decapitated deceased devotion divine dream Dubois dying eyewitness fact father final flames flesh funeral pyre funerary goddess Gujarat hand head hero heroic Hindu husband immolate impure India indigo Jaipur Jasvant Kanvar Jodhpur Kāla Kālī Kallā-jī Karnataka kris Kunbis Lālā Sadanand lemon living lotus marriage māyā Mother Satī nonetheless offering one's oneself ordeal Pārvatī pinda practice priest private collection protest pyre Rajah Rajasthan Rajput Rāma Rāvana religious rice-balls rite ritual sacrifice samādhi Sanskrit sati sati's satia Saurashtra scene Shikarpur District Singh Sītā Śiva south India stele sūdras suicide symbol temple tion tradition trāgā trial by fire victim village voluntary death Wadhwan wear widow widow-burning wife woman women words worship wounds