Sati, the Blessing and the Curse The Burning of Wives in India

by Hawley, John Stratton

• ISBN13: 9780195077742
• ISBN10: 0195077741
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-09-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Several years ago in Rajasthan, an eighteen-year-old woman was burned on her husband's funeral pyre and thus became sati. Before ascending the pyre, she was expected to deliver both blessings and curses: blessings to guard her family and clan for many generations, and curses to prevent anyonefrom thwarting her desire to die. Sati also means blessing and curse in a broader sense. To those who revere it, sati symbolizes ultimate loyalty and self-sacrifice. It often figures near the core of a Hindu identity that feels embattled in a modern world. Yet to those who deplore it, sati is acurse, a violation of every woman's womanhood. It is murder mystified, and as such, the symbol of precisely what Hinduism should not be. In this volume a group of leading scholars consider the many meanings of sati: in India and the West; in literature, art, and opera; in religion, psychology, economics, and politics. With contributors who are both Indian and American, this is a genuinely binational, postcolonial discussion.Contributors include Karen Brown, Paul Courtright, Vidya Dehejia, Ainslie Embree, Dorothy Figueira, Lindsey Harlan, John Hawley, Robin Lewis, Ashis Nandy, and Veena Talwar Oldenburg.

Author Biography

John Stratton Hawley is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at Barnard College, and Director of the South Asian Institute at Columbia University. He is the editor of Songs of the Saints of India (Oxford, 1988) and Fundamentalism and Gender (Oxford, 1993), as well as numerous other books on Indian religion and literature.

Table of Contents

Language and Transliteration	xi
Abbreviations	xiii
Introduction	3	(24)
John Stratton Hawley
The Iconographies of Sati	27	(28)
Paul B. Courtright
Comment: A Broader Landscape	49	(6)
Vidya Dehejia
Die Flambierte Frau: Sati in European Culture	55	(24)
Dorothy M. Figueira
Comment: Sati and the Nineteenth-century British Self	72	(7)
Robin Jared Lewis
Perfection and Devotion: Sati Tradition in Rajasthan	79	(22)
Lindsey Harlan
Comment: Good Mothers and Bad Mothers in the Rituals of Sati	91	(10)
Karen McCarthy Brown
The Roop Kanwar Case: Feminist Responses	101	(30)
Veena Talwar Oldenburg
Sati as Profit Versus Sati as a Spectacle: The Public Debate on Roop Kunwar's Death	131	(56)
Ashis Nandy
Comment: Widows as Cultural Symbols	149	(10)
Ainslie T. Embree
Comment: The Continuing Invention of the Sati Tradition	159	(16)
Veena Talwar Oldenburg
Afterword: The Mysteries and Communities of Sati	175	(12)
John Stratton Hawley
Select Glossary of Indic Terms	187	(8)
Bibliography	195	(8)
Notes on the Contributors	203	(2)
Index	205