Any discussion pertaining to “Satī” has to take into account similar practices or rituals in Ancient India as well as the rest of the world.
A wholesale, en bloc rejection of Hinduism, simply on the basis of “Satī”, superimposing the implicit & explicit values of our modern post-Industrial Revolution Age {which have been changing constantly over the last 250 years too} – on an extremely ancient society, would be misleading & unfair.
If one takes “Satī” in a pure vacuum – without the requisite context – one will inevitably led to the idea of misogyny.
Rather, a distorted idea of extreme misogyny.
Such discussions make it look as if the Indians specifically targeted widows, otherwise life was perfectly normal & as gentle & indulgent as it is today.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
One has to study & understand those times carefully, and visualize, in one’s mind, what was human society like, then – and then attempt to understand, within one’s mind, how unusual or absurd such a practice – if it ever existed – had been.
Strictly speaking, there seems to be little reason to think that “Satī”, as a lawfully enforced law, existed in Ancient India – albeit this is a knotty point.
I’ll come to the knottiness of the point, subsequently.
There is no evidence of it in the Rāmāyaṇa.
After the death of Dasharatha, all his 3 wives – Kausalyā, Sumitrā, and Kaikeyī – continue to live.
None of them commit self-immolation.
There is very little evidence of it in the core text of the Mahābhārata.
Satyavatī – also known as Kālī – or Matsyagandā – the mother of Veda Vyāsa – is very much alive after the death of her husband, Shāntanu.
She has 2 sons, Chitraṅgada and Vicitrav
Both die young, but Vicitravīrya dies after getting married – to Ambikā & Ambālikā – and both continue to live after his death, though neither is pregnant.
We have seen earlier, that in the case of Pāṇḍu, Kuntī and Mādrī – clearly – Mādrī never burnt herself in the pyre of Pāṇḍu – this is demonstrably a later corruption of the text.
Now, whether this self-immolation of Mādrī, is in itself a symbolic event, or somehow to be treated quasi-historically, is another problematic point.
Going back to the Rāmāyaṇa, we see that Mandodarī does not burn herself, after the death of Rāvaṇa.
This is also a complicated issue, because the extent to which Rāvaṇa & his family in specific, and the Rākṣasas in general – could be said to follow the Vedic, Brahmanical path – is very difficult to determine.
All the evidence put together inclines one to think that, generally, they did follow Vedic customs.
Rāvaṇa was basically a Brāhmaṇa, a “Brahmin”, like the Asura known as Vṛtra {slain by Indra, in the Ṛg Veda}.
But he was also a cannibal, like all other Rākṣasas – an enemy, not only of the Gods {Devas}, Ṛṣis, Cāraṇas, S
To what extent other rites & practices of the Vedic Āryas would be applicable to the Rākṣasas, is therefore, difficult to determine.
Rāvaṇa is called “āryaputra” – Son of an Ārya {i.e. an “Aryan”} – in Rāmāyaṇa 6.32.35.
Rāma too is called “āryaputra” in the same chapter, 6.32.29.
Rāvaṇa is called “āryaputra” in 6.110.4 also.
The fact remains that Mandodarī doesn’t immolate herself on Rāvaṇa’s pyre.
Well, in the Rāmāyaṇa itself, we come across sufficient evidence that suicide – after the death of a beloved one – was common enough, in Ancient India.
This is distinct from religiously-motivated self-immolation – i.e. self-immolation by ascetics, hermits, and those who have renounced the world.
Again, neither of the two above is the same as an enforced or enforceable law of self-immolation {religiously sanctioned}.
However, they build up a psychological, emotional & cultural background for the emergence of something like “Satī”.
To understand a practice like “Satī”, we have to understand the world in which these people lived & breathed: to grasp fully what was normal & acceptable to the people of those times.
Today, nobody throws a criminal into a cauldron of boiling oil, but we have heard that there were such punishments in earlier days.
People who thought death in a cauldron of boiling oil was normal, would not be absolutely appalled at “Satī”.
We have to understand both the Indian world & the world as a whole in that era.
We need to know what, generally, were their customs & rites, and what was the general environment they were born into, and raised in – and then judge whether “Satī” – as & when it came to be prevalent – was absurd or misogynistic or barbaric or what.
There are thus, 3-4 points to be kept in mind before discussing the question of self-immolation or suicide, in Ancient India.
1. Some people – out of attachment & despair – followed a loved one in death.
This applies not only to wives & concubines, but even people of one’s kingdom, to people in general who revere or love a particular figure.
2. Certain people actually burnt themselves – these, being renunciates, cenobites, sages etc. {whether symbolically or literally}.
3. Generally, dying or getting rid of one’s body, was not considered a very big deal in those times – right down to the Medieval Ages.
This was often done for the sake of one’s honor – or if one was very old & weak – or one was diseased, etc.
4. Self-torture, self-mortification, self-mutilation, putting one’s body through excessive pain, emaciating & withering one’s body – all these were perfectly normal & prevalent, in the Ancient & Medieval worlds – not just in India, but everywhere.
We have all heard of the Fakirs – laughed to pieces at in the 19th century, more or less disappearing in the 20th – who could pierce & cut their body in extreme shows of the power of the mind & will over the flesh.
When the most revered men in a society burnt themselves in fires, when those held in awe lacerated their own arms, & people who walked over hot coals were considered pure & sinless, it makes for a different type of psychology, a different set of expectations & different ideas of normalcy.
The world has always been full of all sorts of cruel rites & practices – including cannibalism & human sacrifice – which existed right up to the 18th-19th centuries – which would be called “barbaric” today.
Plutarch, the priest of Greek God Apollo, wrote, in his work, On Superstition:
Would it not ... have been better for those Gauls and Scythians to have had absolutely no conception, no vision, no tradition, regarding the gods, than to believe in the existence of gods who take delight in the blood of human sacrifice and hold this to be the most perfect offering and holy rite?
{That is, the Gauls & Scythians practised human sacrifice.}
Again, would it not have been far better for the Carthaginians to have taken Critias or Diagoras to draw up their law-code at the very beginning, and so not to believe in any divine power or god, rather than to offer such sacrifices as they used to offer to Cronos?
These were not in the manner that Empedocles describes in his attack on those who sacrifice living creatures:
Changed in form is the son beloved of his father so pious,
Who on the altar lays him and slays him. What folly!
No, but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums took the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people.
For what this testimony is worth, these were people with pretty lofty & powerful civilizations.
They were not “primitive savages”, but city-building folk.
What’s important is not just the cruel rites & practices – but the ideas structuring the universe & the nature & progression of the human soul.
What’s important is the psychology behind the rites & practices.
People then took their gods & various supernatural beings – heaven & hell & other invisible realms of the universe – as well as the immortality or transmigration of their souls – very seriously.
These were not merely matters of chitchat, idle speculation, & armchair-intellectual-debate: the gods, the spirits, the manes, the ghosts, the innumerable beings inhabiting the numerous unseen worlds apart from our tangible, perceptible Earth, even inhabiting each & every object & entity in our world, were a living reality to these people.
They could kill, & die, & sacrifice, & accept prodigious amounts of suffering, in the name of those beings, those states of existence, those worlds.
In other words, it was no very unusual or absurd thing, to abandon their life, or mutilate themselves, or burn themselves.
The conceptions of “cruelty” have been changing drastically for thousands of years – and what was something quite normal yesterday {say, stoning a stray animal} is considered cruel today.
We cannot quite apply the contemporary notions of “cruelty” uniformly to a world 4,000-5,000 years prior to ours.
“If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor — both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.”
So says the Bible – Book of Leviticus 20:10.
The punishment was death, according to the Mahābhārata too.
It would be considered utterly inhuman & brutal, to kill someone for adultery, today.
So let’s not judge everything ancient by modern standards of behavior: we still cannot decide if wearing fur is “super cruel” or not.
Mutilation of the body was quite normal in ancient religious rites, for example, as we see in the Bible, when the Hebrew prophet Elijah challenged the priests of the Middle-Eastern deity, Baal, to prove who is the one true God {King James Bible, 1 Kings 18.27-29}:
“At noon Elijah began to taunt them {i.e. the priests of Baal}.
“Shout louder!” he said.
“Surely he is a god! {said the priests of Baal, desperately trying to invoke their God} Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”
So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed.
Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice.
But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.”
James Frazer {whom I cannot always believe, & whose word I don’t necessarily accept} wrote, in his gigantic, magisterial work, The Golden Bough {Vol. 4, Sec. 5}:
“... the Olympic games were supposed to have been founded in honour of Pelops, the great legendary hero, who had a sacred precinct at Olympia, where he was honoured above all the other heroes and received annually the sacrifice of a black ram.
Once a year, too, all the lads of Peloponnese are said to have lashed themselves on his grave at Olympia, till the blood streamed down their backs as a libation to the departed hero.
Similarly at Roman funerals the women scratched their faces till they bled for the purpose, as Varro tells us, of pleasing the ghosts with the sight of the flowing blood.
...
So, too, among the aborigines of Australia mourners sometimes cut and hack themselves and allow the streaming blood to drip on the dead body of their kinsman or into the grave.”
I cannot emphasize this enough:
We have to keep the picture of the entire ancient-medieval world – both inside & outside India – in our minds – to realize that “Satī” – if at all it existed – was most probably nothing so shocking, and would not be seen as some grave injustice or hysterical prejudice.
“If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire” – Leviticus 21:9 – this is undoubtedly “barbaric” and “cruel” by modern standards, but nobody rejects the whole Bible, or even the whole Book of Leviticus, for all that; nor would the most pious, devout Israelites push to practice this law today.
English Christians accepted “hanging, drawing, and quartering” – a shockingly violent, brutal & blood-curdling act – right until the 19th century – but nobody can judge or dismiss Christianity, per se, by this punishment – nor can one pronounce the English a “barbaric race of primitive savages” by this law.
There is much more to them {both Christianity & Englishmen}, much that is great & good & admirable.
The same laws of ideological, moral & cultural evaluation apply to all.