Stages of Sati Transformation

The transformation of a woman into a sati comprises three stages. The first of these is the pativrata stage. A woman becomes a pativrata when she marries. Thus the word pativrata sometimes simply refers to a wife. But as we have seen, even when used in this basic way it bears an ideological nuance, for it literally means someone who has made a vow, a vrat , to a husband, a pati . The substance of this vow is devotion, which is understood primarily as protection. If a wife is devoted to her hus-

[8] Comparative work on contemporary instances of sati immolation includes Courtright, Dreadful Practice ; and K. Sangari and S. Vaid, "Sati in Modern India," Economic and Political Weekly , 1 Aug. 1981, 1285–88.

[9] Examples of condemnation include "Sati: A Pagan Sacrifice," India Today 15 Oct. 1987; and Bakshi, "Shame," The Illustrated Weekly of India 4 Aug. 1987, 20–23.

band and so protects him, he will prosper. If not, he will suffer and perhaps even die, which will bring misfortune to his family as well.

As a pativrata , a woman protects her husband in two basic ways. She serves him: she sees to it that her husband's meals are hot and his clothes are cleaned, obeys the commands of her senior in-laws, and tends to her children. Second, she performs religious rituals, such as fasts. By doing so she pleases various deities, who compensate her by protecting her husband and helping her to be a better pativrata , thus increasing her personal capacity to protect her husband.

If despite her devotion her husband dies before she does, she can escape culpability by following his body onto his cremation pyre. She makes a vrat , a vow, to burn her body along with his.^[10] By this vow she is transformed from a pativrata into a sativrata , one who, as a good woman (sati ), has made a vrat to die with her husband.^[11] In formulating an intention to die she enters into the second stage of the satimata transformation process.^[12]

When the sativrata perishes in her husband's cremation fire, she becomes a satimata . In this last stage, she joins other family satimatas in protecting the welfare of the family she has left behind. Her protective services are basically those performed by the kuldevi in her maternal aspect. Yet the kuldevi is a bilocal, bifunctional being; the satimata stays in one place and performs what is fundamentally one function. The kuldevi serves on the battlefield as a kul protector and within the household as a family protector; the satimata devotes her undivided attention to family protection.

Whereas the kuldevi is a goddess, the status of the satimata is far less clear. Women I interviewed generally explained her status as lower than that of a goddess (devi ) but higher than that of an ancestor (pitrani ).^[13] In some communities in Rajasthan people of various backgrounds may

[10] In conversation women occasionally substituted the term sankalp for vrat .

[11] As chapter 3 notes, a pativrata cannot intend, much less vow, to be a satimata while her husband is alive: to do so would be to will his death before hers and to betray her prior vow to protect him.

[12] The terms pativrata and satimata are common but sativrata is not, though its meaning is clear to all. It seems analogous to such "high Hindi" terms as sakahari (vegetarian) and viseshkar (especially); everyone knows these but few employ them in everyday speech. People usually speak of the pativrata or satimata , not the sativrata , as deciding to die. It is not especially significant that "sativrata" is seldom used colloquially; what is important is that the sativrata period, the time between the sati 's vow and her death, is a discrete period of transition. As this chapter shows, during this time a woman displays supernatural powers and lays down rules for her future veneration. For convenience, I employ sativrata when discussing this interim stage.

[13] As I learned by blundering, it is rather insulting to refer to a satimata as a pitrani .

understand satis to be goddesses or at least associate them with divine (goddess-like) power.^[14] In either case a satimata seems not to have the range of character that goddesses generally have. Lacking the fierce animalian iconography of the battlefield kuldevi , she is ever the lovely and devoted wife, the embodiment of the pativrata ideal. In this form she protects pativratas and encourages them, and sometimes coerces them, to perform their duties of protecting and increasing the family. Moreover, she functions as paradigm; she represents utter perfection of the pativrata role.