A reply to Dr. Jamanadas' essay on Sati

Dr. Jamanadas has the habit of vilifying the Brahmins and Hinduism (normally without any proper evidence) for every social evil which has ever prevailed in India.
As an example, let us turn our attention to ‘Sati was Started for Preserving Caste’ written by him. The true origin and nature of Sati is clarified by us and the wrong conclusions made by Jamanadas are pointed out.
Various wrong statements (words in quotes) made by him are countered in this article.

0. “BUDDHIST LAW WAS THE NATIONAL LAW OF INDIA, BECAUSE FROM THE HISTORICAL PERIOD, THE RELIGION OF INDIA WAS BUDDHISM. IT WAS THE MAIN STREAM”
This shows his perverted thinking. Does he say that there was no historical period before the Buddha? Or does he say that the Vedic period is not a part of Indian History. He is wearing colored glasses and hence, he seems to have lost balanced view. Buddhists were not in a complete majority in India at any point of time. At no point of time was India a Buddhist nation. Though many rulers professed Buddhism, Buddhists never outnumbered the Hindus. Similarly, no single law (leave alone Buddhist Law) was ever implemented in India on the national level. Even the Manu Smriti was never completely implemented. To say that Buddhist Law was the national law is highly ridiculous.


1. “To get some idea of what was The Buddhist Personal Law, we quote from Ms. Shastri”
Personal Laws followed by Buddhists of various regions are a result of social activities, customs and culture. They have nothing to do with any Buddhist Sacred Law or the Buddha per se. Jamanadas cites the Buddhist nations as the proof for any Buddhist Personal Law which he claims to exist. He does not consider that there are many differences in the Personal Laws of various Buddhist nations and that these Personal Laws are based on the social customs of those nations and not Buddhism.
Moreover, he does not cite any Buddhist scholar or text for such a proof but he cites Ms.Shastri whom he calls a ‘Vedic scholar’!!

2. “But it must be said that at one time when Buddhism was a living religion in India, they influenced, not to a small extent, Hindu culture and the legal literature, Kautlilya admits divorce by mutual consent as did the Buddhists”(cited from Ms. Shastri by Jamanadas)
Any Sanskrit scholar will tell us that Kautilya’s ‘Arthashastra’ is a purely Brahminical literature and that he does not follow any non-Brahminical text in any place. He does not even mention the presence of Buddhists. Being so, to claim that Kautilya’s concept of divorce is taken from the Buddhist Law is misleading and completely wrong. The reason why Jamanadas is citing this work is very clear: Ms.Shastri seems to know very less about Brahminical Laws’ origin and her writings (which seem to have some fundamental flaws) are such that they can be used to vilify Hinduism as such when a cut-paste technique is adopted.

3. “The earliest of these stelae is found in Eran in Sagar District in M.P. and is dated 510 A. D. Thus the practice of Sati was coming to vogue in sixth century A.D.”
I don’t understand why many ‘scholars’ consider sixth century as the period when Sati was coming into vogue. It seems they do not know about the Sangam Literature in Tamil. Normally, people call the Sangam literature as the exponent of ‘Dravidian spirit’. Let us see what they offer us about Sati:
A queen chastises the courtiers for not [apparently] performing sati and tells them that she would rather join her beloved husband in the pyre than lead the Spartan life of a widow. Not for her, says she, is the life of a widow who eats one meal of rice mixed with gingili oil and neem leaves, and who sleeps on the bare floor. May you not commit sati, the queen tells the courtiers, rather sarcastically, but for me the cold water of the lake is not different from the fire of the pyre. And the very next song confirms that she did commit sati. [Purananuru 246]
Another Tamil woman implores the potter to make her husband’s burial urn large enough to hold the widow as well. [Purananuru 256] [Note that burying alive was not practiced in North India. This shows that the concept of dying along with husband must be a Tamil practice which was later accepted by the Indian society in general. (In Silappadhikaram, we find that the Pandya queen fell dead, immediately, on knowing that her husband had died.)]
Even the earliest Tamil grammar text, Tolkappiyam, speaks about Sati. Tolkappiyam says that the highest glory that a woman can aspire for is to join her husband’s funeral pyre. [Tolkappiyam, Poruladhikaram 77]
Manimekhalai has an interesting narrative where the chaste Adhirai wrongly concludes that her trader husband had died and attempts to commit sati, but the fire refuses to engulf her. Then her husband returns and they live happily ever after! [Manimekhalai XVI]

A woman wasn’t forced to commit sati. A Sangam song says134 that after her son’s father departed, the widow’s head was tonsured and her bangles were removed. Then onwards, lily with rice became her staple food. [Purananuru 250]
[Note that Manu does not recommend tonsuring the head of widow. But ancient Tamil society seems to have practiced this custom.]

The case being so, I wonder why the likes of Jamanadas are hell bent on accusing the Brahmins. As he himself states, ‘Sati/Anumarana’ is found only in the later Smrti texts (like Vishnu Smrti) and not in the Manu Smrti. Similarly, we can see that tonsuring the head of widows is not found in Manu Smrti but it is found in the Sangam Literature. We can safely conclude that Sati and widow’s life of austerities are Tamil concepts which were exported to the rest of India. To blame the Brahmins for these customs is nothing except venomous anti-brahminism.

4. “Thus we find that excepting the solitary instance mentioned by Diodoras, which occured in a foreign land, and the persons involved were perhaps from foreign tribes settled in India during those times, the practice started from the time of decline and ultimate fall of Buddhism after seventh century.”
Neither do I know nor am I able to verify the work of Diodoras. But from what Jamanadas says, it shows that Sati was prevalent in 316 BCE. He has cited Sati stelae of Eran which is dated to 510 CE. Then, to say that Sati started only after the seventh century is contradictory. We can say that Sati was always prevalent in India. Perhaps the practice of erecting memorials was a later development. We must note that Sati was not compulsory in most places. As we have shown above. Sati was practiced by Tamils even during the Sangam age. Therefore, the above statement of Dr.Jamanadas is baseless.

5. “Still we find Banabhatta (7th century) in the court of Harshavardhana and later Medhatithi (9th century) condemning the practice.”
Jamanadas has carefully left out the name of Swami Sahajanand(Swami Narayan) who openly opposed Sati. He has elsewhere mentioned the name of Raja RamMohan Roy. If Banabhatta and Medhatithi condemned the practice, it could have been because the practice was not mentioned in the early Smritis or Dharmasutras (Medatithi opposed it on the basis that suicide is anti-Vedic) or that they did not believe in the practice. Also, one must keep in mind that India had a variety of philosophies and philosophers. Therefore, mere condemnation of a practice does not mean that the practice is new. Yagnas were condemned by Buddhists and Jains but it does not make Yagna a new practice. The condemnation simply shows that not everyone accepted the practice. Finally, we see that Medatithi opposed Sati but such opposition is not found during the medieval period after Muslim invasions. The impact of Muslim rule is one of the prime reasons for the all around acceptance and glorification of Sati.
[Note: I have not referred the work of Bana mentioned by Jamanadas but I have considered the claims made by him about those works to be true.]

6. “All these customs were imposed by the brahmins in order to prevent transgression of caste rules. This was explained by Dr. Ambedkar as early as in 1919, ["Castes in India", W&S. vol. I, p. 5 ff.] while dealing with genesis and mechanism of Castes. The following are the salient points from it.”
Sati was not at all essential to maintain the purity of castes. Manu and others (including Kautilya) has clearly laid down that the son of a Brahmin woman and a Sudra man will be a Chandala. Pratiloma marriages were discouraged. Where does the necessity for Sati arise here?? Mere anti-brahminism is the root cause for all these vicious and false propaganda.

7. “When a Tomar King in Gujrath died, his 90,000 queens were requested not to commit sati. They consulted their Kula-brahmana, who advised them to commit sati as Veda verse 18/877 mentions "Agne" and not "Agre", just for the sake of golden coins, thus condemning these 90,000 women to flames.”
Now, Jamanadas has not provided any proof for the above accusation. He speaks about an ‘unnamed’ King. It is highly unlikely that a King had 90,000 ‘queens’. Also, he accuses the ‘unnamed’ Brahmin to have urged the ‘queens’ to commit Sati for a few golden coins. Once again, blatant anti-brahminism with its venomous fangs is clearly exposed. Even if the above incident is true, it is a singular incident and the character of one individual cannot be held as the normal behaviour of an entire community. It has become a common practice to conduct a spit and run campaign against Brahmins without even caring to show any evidence.

Sati was committed by the Rajput women not because they were forced into it. Most Sati cases were voluntary. Only in a few cases, was a woman forced to do Sati. Rajput women committed Sati voluntarily. In general, they were not forced to do it. The case of Vijayanagar queens is an excellent example. They considered it as a sacred duty and were not afraid of committing Sati.

Even among the higher castes, Sati was very rare among the people of South India from the medieval periods. During the British rule in Bengal presidency(1813-1828), the average number of sati cases per year was only 600. While Sati was most prevalent among the Brahmins, many Brahmin widows followed a life of austerities and the number of Brahmin women who committed Sati was very small. This is further proof of the fact that Sati was not compulsory but a voluntary act. Brahmin widows always existed and hence, the argument about forced Sati is wrong.

Italian Traveler Pietro Della Valle has documented a Sati which he witnessed in the town of Ikkeri in November, 1623. He states that the Sati was voluntary. The other two wives of the deceased person did not commit Sati.

Today, we have grown out of such acts. But that does not mean that we have to blame a particular community for Sati when they, certainly, did not invent it. It was a custom accepted by the society at large and most certainly, was not thrust upon the society by the Brahmins. It seems to be a social practice which was adopted from the ancient Tamil culture.
Finally, if one goes through the pages of Indian History, he/she could see that Sati like practices became widely prevalent only after the Muslim Invasion of India. Large scale Jouhars were held to escape from the clutches of the Muslim army’s hands. Every Hindu woman (of all varnas) participated in such Jouhars (see Kanhadade Prabandha of Padmanabha Pandita). This will make clear the reason for the sudden rise in the spate of Sati and its glorification. That Sati was made a normal practice to enable the women to face mass Jouhars with courage appears to be the most probable reason. Even then, we see that Sati was not at all compulsory. Therefore, the reason for the sudden increase in sati cases was not preservation of caste but preventing Hindu women from falling into the Muslim harem. [This practice was not uncommon in the medieval world. We have heard that the Muslims of Baghdad killed their female relatives to prevent them from being raped or taken away by the Mongols.]
Conclusion:
1. Sati, most probably, originated in the Tamil country.
2. Brahmins did not invent Sati.
3. Caste system was no reason to enforce Sati.
4. Generally, Sati was not compulsory. It was a voluntary act.
5. To blame the Brahmins for Sati is both illogical and baseless.
6. Sati was a social custom which was adopted by the medieval Hindu society at large.
7. Muslim Invasions were a prime reason for the sudden increase in the number of Sati and its glorification.