Rajputana wotnen of rank seein to],have been the naost willing to accompany their husbands' remains to the funeral pile. Amongst all others of the Hindu and Sikh religionists, and notedly amongst the Mahratta Brahmans, the satis were often urged for political reasons, and to got rid of the encumbrance of lone widows. 1Vlien the Rajput Jawan Singh of Edur died in 1833, there was a forcible sati of his Widow.
When Alan Singh died, in the reign of Jahan gir; sixty of his 1500 wives Were reported to have burned themselves. Colonel Tod relates (Rajas than, fi. p. 93) that at the cretnation of the body of the ruler of Alarwar, Raja Ajit Singh, on the 13th of the dark half of the month Asar, in 1780, the deceased's Chauhani queen, whom Ajit had married in his non-age, and mother of the parricide, the queen from Derawul, the queen from the Tuar race, the Chaora rani, and her of Shelchawati with fifty-eight curtain wives, all burned themsdves.
In the Mahratta country, the monument over the ashes of a sati has usually a hand and aim engraved on it. But at Brahmanwari in Aukolc, the monument over the ashes of Bapu Gokla's daughter has two feet engraved on it. She burned herself there on hearing of her husband's death after the battle of Koreygaon. Rao Lakha, at his tomb at Bhoj, is represented on horseback, with seven sati stones on the left, and eight on the right. The tomb was erected about 1770. The Kaur race of Sirguja at one time encouraged satis. A grove between Partabpur and Jil milli is sacred to a sati, to whom once a year a , fowl is sacrificed, and once every third year a ' black goat.
The emperor Akbar discouraged sad, and on one occasion rode nearly a hundred miles at his utmost speed, to rescue the daughter in-law of the raja of Jodhpur, whose husband had died. Ile positively prohibited the burning of idows against their will. Amongat Hindus, also, aati was discouraged by relatives and friends. In addition to their own entreaties and those of the infant children, friends of the family and persons in authority used their influence to dis suade the widow, and in a family of high rank the sovereign himself would go to C0118010 the NV id ow.
One common expedient waa to keep the widow engaged in conversation while the body was quietly removed and burned. It was reckoned a bad omen for a government to have many satis.
When Sukwar Bal, widow of Raja Shao,. was plotting the extinction of the power of the Peshwas, Balaji Rao, who had detected her plot, sent her as a sneering message that he hoped she would not think of burning herself with her Intsband's body,' she forthwith burned herself ; at the same time he had promised her brother an estate, provided she, for the honour of the family,' became a sati.
Southern bulia.—Mr. Elphinstene says, The practice of sati is by no means universal in India. It never occurs to the south of the river Kistna.' The Abla6 Dubois also says (p. 198) that satis were rare in the south of the Peninsula. Never theless, Marco Polo stated the practice of Soutltern India just as Odoric does; whilst iu 1580, Ga.sparo 13albi, an accurate and unimaginative traveller, describes with seeming truth a sati which he witnessed at Negapatana, and speaks of the custom as common. In the middle of the 17th century, I'. Vincenzo, the Procurator-General of the Car melites, says it was especially common in Quern, whilst he was told that on the death of the Naik of Madura 11,000 women had offered themselves to the flames. These 11,000 satis may have been as mythical as the 11,000 virgins of Cologne, but the statement proves the practice there, And in the beginning of the 18th century it continued to be extremely prevalent in that region. P. Martin, in a letter from Marawar (or Retuned, opposite to Ceylon), dated in 1713, mentions three cases then recent, in which respectively forty-five, seventeen, and twelve women had performed sati on the deaths of the husbands, princes of that state. The widow of the raja of Trichinopoly, being left pregnant, burned herself after delivery.
Towards the close of the 18th century, sati was frequent in the Bengal Presidency, and most so in the Bengal I'roviuce. It was comparatively rare in the Madras Presidency and Orissa ; Gan jam, Itajannindry, and "Vizagapatant were the parts in which it most occurred. The custom was very prevalent under Maliratta rule, but under the British became very ntre in Bombay. About the beginning of the 19th century, it used to occur at Poona, in onlinary and quiet periods, about twelve times on an average of as many years. Major Moor was a whole year at Poona, and kuew of its occurrence only six times, but it was a tutmanous and revolutionary period, and people were of cottrse put out of their usual and ordinary rotttine of thought and deed. It was generally carried out at the junction of the Moota and Moolla rivers, about a quarter of a mile from the skirt of the city, at which junction (thence called Sangam) the Britiah Residency was situated.