Immolating Women: A Global History of Widow Burning from Ancient Times to the Present

Widow-burning in India, also known as sati, has been for centuries a widely known and hotly debated phenomenon. But its more universal anthropological, religious, social, and political contexts have been neglected. In this book, sati is studied for the first time in a global context. It is considered as one among many manifestations of following into death, which entails the death of one of more persons within a ritualized and public act. The decisive feature is not the manner of dying (burning or being burned, which also occurs with witches and heretics), but the function and the intent: that is, accompanying a dead person into the hereafter. The custom is shown, in this hugely scholarly work, to have existed in various forms in most parts of the world and to have combined strong beliefs in the hereafter with power struggles in this world, both between the sexes and between social groups. Sati in India appears thus as the most deeply rooted form of following into death; but, as this book reveals, no longer as a custom unique to India.