Description

Sati or suttee is a practice, a chiefly historical one, in which a Hindu widow burns alive on her deceased husband's funeral pyre, the death by burning entered into voluntarily, by coercion, or by a perception of the lack of satisfactory options for continuing to live. Although it is debated whether it received scriptural mention in early Hinduism, it has been linked to related Hindu practices in the Indo-Aryan-speaking regions of India, which have diminished the rights of women, especially those to the inheritance of property. A cold form of sati, or the neglect and casting out of Hindu widows, has been prevalent from ancient times. Greek sources from around c. 300 BCE make isolated mention of sati, but it probably developed into a real fire sacrifice in the medieval era within northwestern Rajput clans to which it initially remained limited, to become more widespread during the late medieval era.