Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Self Sacrifice in Ancient India

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Today we’re looking into self sacrifice in ancient India. Why did people do it? How did people think about death and the afterlife? Who were the gods people would sacrifice themselves for? And why would a widow sacrifice herself by sitting on top of her dead husband's funeral pyre? Kate is Betwixt the Sheets with Mary Storm to find out all about it.You can find out more about Mary’s work here.If you're enjoying Betwixt please vote for us at the British Podcast Awards here. It would mean the world to us!This podcast was produced by Charlotte Long and mixed by Siobhan Dale.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely but twixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here to give you actually quite a serious fair-doos warning. This episode is about self-sacrifice and death, so we can't pretend that this isn't going to be a bit tasty. You just might not want to listen to that today, in which case, just skip, just go and listen to one of the other episodes,

and we will catch you next time. We are on a street in a place called Malam, a small village in southeast India, ahead of us we can see an ornate 11th century temple with stone sculptures placed around the gateway. These stones have no writing on them, just a selection of carvings, including stones depicting bodies without heads,

and they date from the 4th to the 13th century. We are looking at hero stones, ancient commemorative sculptures of people who have sacrificed themselves to the gods. But why did people do this? What did people think about death at the time? How did they do this? And why would a widow sacrifice herself by sitting on top her dead husband's funeral pyre?

What do you have called him at? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the fire. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for beautiful time. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, with me, Kate Lister.

Today we are looking at self-sacrifice in ancient India. How did people think about the afterlife? Who were the gods that they were sacrificing themselves for? And what was the symbolic importance of the head? We are joined by historian Mary Storm, who is going to answer all these questions and more. But before we get into it, if you have a moment, Could you please vote for us for the listener's choice at the British Podcast Awards? We have made it into the top 20 and if you went and voted for us, we might even get it this time around.

If you follow the link in the show notes, it'll take you to the web page. It'll only take a couple of seconds. Right on with the show. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Mary Storm. How are you doing? I thank you. I am fascinated by this subject that we're going to talk about.

My favourite things is when I come to a subject that really I don't know very much about it, apart from maybe bits and pieces that I've read in novels, it's probably been sensationalised on TV. So speaking to somebody who could really tell me what was going on is fascinating. The idea of self-sacrifice in India, in ancient India, it's a practice that I've read about in some Slavic cultures and various other, but I don't know anything about it in India. So I'm fascinated to talk to you about this today. The only thing I know about self-sacrifice in ancient India is probably from rubbish films and things like that. How widespread was this practice?

And what is the evidence for it that people were willingly offering themselves up for sacrifice? I think it was always quite limited. We know references in contemporary texts, not just religious texts, but also in dramas and poetry that had happened. But we know from inscriptions on hero stones and images on him. hero stones about people who offer their lives to honor a king, to honor a deity, either a goddess or a form of Shiva or even sometimes Vishnu, but very rarely. So we have evidence. We have written evidence and lots of sort of poetic exaggeration as well. So the challenge is sorting through the written form. Was it just a reference to an ideal state or was it a reference to an actual

historical event. And some historians have said, oh, this was just an ideal, that people didn't really offer themselves. But we have found at places like the Jaya Nagra in the southern part of India, the southern deck. And we have found hero stones that actually show these contraptions that allowed people to offer their own lives, to take their own heads off, for example. And there is a lot of references in written form that's pretty down to earth. So, yes, it did happen, but it was not common. What is a hero stone? Just for a start to question. Hero stones were these memorials that were put up to honor someone who did something wonderful or extraordinary. Someone who died in battle, a woman who offered herself as Sati, a man who fought off wild animals to protect a village,

someone who protected a Brahman or somebody standing by the road. So I was doing mining his own business and suddenly a wild animal. animal would come towards him and someone offered his life to save them. Those kinds of things. They're usually associated with battle. So someone who died in battle. And what kind of time period are we talking here? Because I started to say ancient India, but that's very broad. Like, what kind of time period is that? It is a broad period. The first reference we have is a stone in 316 BCE. That was a Sati stone, a woman who offered her life when her husband died in battle. Wow. He died in battle fighting against the Greek thatropi in Iran.

So that's very early. But most of these stones turn up in the medieval, what we could loosely call the medieval period. So from around the 5th century to the 16th, 17th century. What does a hero stone look like? I've never seen one before. Almost like a tombstone. Okay.

You know, rounded top, most of them. Some sati stones for women are just, a sculpture of a raised arm and the arm is still decorated in bangles as an indication that the woman died not as a widow but as a wife. The first thing when she learned that her husband had died in battle or other circumstances and she decided she would become Sati, the first thing she would do would break her bangles because she was no longer entitled to be ornamented, to be decorative. She would break her bangles and most bangles are glass. So there are many of the, these Saty stones that just show this raised arm decorated with bangles.

Wow. Talk me through that practice. It's the word that I've heard in Victorian novels about India. So I'm going to be very careful with what I know about it because it's probably nonsense. But I'm aware of that word, Suti, and this idea of self-sacrifice, I suppose. But I wasn't even sure that that was an actual historical practice. But how widespread was it?

And what was the cultural attitudes around that? It was always problematic. I mean, there were people who glorified it, who said Sati was like the goddess Sati, like the spouse of Shiva who self-immolated herself. The story was that Sati married against her father's wishes, married, you know, this ascetic wandering god, Shiva. And her father was upset about this. And the father then had a great feast, a sacrifice of offerings and so forth. He invited all the gods, but he did not invite. Shiva. And so Sati was insulted for her husband and she was so upset and so shamed by this insult committed by her father that she burst into flames. She immolated. She self-immolated in rage. Shiva was heartbroken that his wife had set herself on fire in her anger. And so he picked up her body as her body fell apart in different places in India as he wandered in his grief, her body started to fall in different places in India. And so each place where different parts of her body dropped onto the ground, onto the earth, that became a holy

sight associated with the goddess Sati. So that's the backstory. The actual sort of practice of it and why we call it a woman who does his sati, it's in honor of this goddess. It means a faithful woman, a patty, a rata, a woman who's taken a vow to follow her husband or a Sahagamini, a person. A person who goes along, a companion. The most common area where we know Sati was practiced is in Rajasthan and in Kashmir as well, but mainly in Rajasthan. And the earliest Sati stone doesn't really turn up until the 9th century. And references are in South India long before that.

But it seems to have been most popular or most common in Rajasthan. But even at its height, it was really only practiced by upper caste. Jetria women. We know from around 1815 to 1829 there were records kept by the British and by Indian reformers. Ramohan Roy, for example, was a great reformer against Sadi. That's the only time we have actual records. So in that period from 1815 to 1829, we know about 8,000 women committed Satya over that period. It was not exclusively in the Jethria cast, but it was most common. And it's very problematic, obviously, for lots of reasons. But the woman who decided to become Sati was considered, once you made the decision, you were a goddess. Right. Okay.

So your blessing or curse on the way to the funeral pyre was absolute. You know, if you decided to become Sati, it was your chance to get back at your enemies by cursing them or blessing your family for eternity. And you wipe your own sin and your husband's sin away by doing it. That is some small print there, isn't it? Oh my goodness. I'm just like from like a modern perspective, just trying to get my head around it. I'm just thinking of all the idiots that I meet on Tinder and I'm just like, no, I wouldn't even pay that Uber home, let alone do this. It's very hard to understand. But I think it's also something about the sense of agency and identity that's very, very,

different in that culture at that time. You know, we are so absorbed with self-agency and, you know, self-identity and, you know, what we do is for ourselves and self-love and all the stuff. And I think that was very different in, you know, medieval society. It's not just India, but certainly in China, certainly in medieval European society. You were part of a community. You were part of a collective in a way that preempted this feeling that, well, I'm not going to go climb on the pyre. Even saying that, it's still, I think, hard for us to get our heads around. Really is, isn't it? I've read the 10th century Muslim traveler Ibn Phelan's account of Viking burial where a servant girl was put on board the ship that was about to be burnt down with her

master, and he was deeply troubled by that. She seemed to be going willingly, but it was quite a complex thing. So this does happen elsewhere, this idea that you follow them to the afterlife, because that's what was happening in Viking cultures. You were a Sahagamani. You were a companion. And yeah, I've read about this in Viking culture as well. It's just extraordinary. My father was Norwegian, you know, have a Scandinavian heritage. I mean, it's like, wow, that's not something I feel like I inherited. And they weren't even married. It was somebody that worked for him as a slave girl. And off she goes on this boat. That's probably the problem, isn't it?

Is that we're so our own modern mindset just cannot get our heads around this, around what would make somebody want to do this. I suppose it's tempting to read it through modern eyes of like that they must have been forced to do it. The idea that somebody would willingly do this is very, very difficult to get your head around. But they have the belief that this makes them into a goddess and that they are actually honoring people and they're going to join them in the afterlife. I suppose that makes more sense. There is also evidence that many people didn't want to do it.

Ah, right. We know, for example, many Kashmiri queens who became regents on the death of their husbands, would arrange for courtiers to beg them not to mount the pyre. Oh, that's clever. You would say, oh, I'm going to be, but then you would have your prime minister beg you, you, oh, you can't do this. Your Majesty, we need you to run the kingdom, and please don't do this. So there are quite a few references to high-born women who chose not to do it and figured out ways to get around it.

And for example, it wasn't just in Kashmir, but we know there were queens who outlived their husbands and held positions of power. Vajaya Nagra, again, another location where there were queens who lived on after the death of their husbands. So it wasn't always given. And there were many social critics of it as well. So it wasn't just when the British came along. There were many Indian critics who said, you know, true love is living on, behaving honorably in memory of your spouse. There were also a few instances of men who committed Sati. I was going to ask that.

Yes, when their queens died. Or, you know, kings who sort of died of broken heart or men who died of a broken heart and are referenced as if they were suchies in a way. They died of grief at the loss of their wives. So on a practical level, I'm sure it settled the problem of having to take care of a widow. It settled property disbursement. There were certain communities who never committed Suti. You know, the Buddhists, Jains, Jains did other forms of self-sacrifice, but the Muslim community, you know, there are other, the Parsis, Christians, you know, there were other communities within India who did not do this. What would it mean to commit Suti?

Like, what would that act be like? Was there a ritual around it a certain way that it had to be done? There are descriptions of European travelers who, especially in the era of Ibn Batuta and other travelers. And then slightly later, Portuguese travelers, we have references, you know, these rituals where a woman would go around. She would commit to Sati. She would say, I'm going to be a Sadi.

You can't say, you know, your husband's old and dying, and you can't say, okay, I'm going to be Sati. Because that itself is bad, because you're recognizing that he will die. Oh, right. It has to be this spontaneous declaration. But there are references to women who, upon the death of their husbands, would then declare that they two would be sati. They would go on the pyre and they would walk around or ride on a horse around the village, you know, lamenting their life and saying goodbye. And, you know, their references in the 18th century Rajasthan where there would be competition between women to mount the pyre.

You know, it would be seen as you were closest to the king if you were as someone. I think the Maharaja of Bundy burned with 84 women or something. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, my God. Raja Bud Singh of Bundy, who died in 1735, who drowned. 84 of his women ascended the pyre. Were they all his wives? They weren't just like people that knew him.

Just somebody who bought him his tea in the morning. I'm sure that they were official wives and then they were probably concubines. Wow. 84 women dying on the pyre. with you. I mean, that is quite a spectacle. I don't know if impressive is the word, but that's a thing, isn't it? Yeah. And I think that with these dramatic imulations in the 18th century, I think that was also the impetus for reform. So you see these reformers in the late 18th and early 19th century really pushing against it. And, you know, it became illegal in the early 19th century.

But there's still a few, you know, extremist Hindu people with the an extreme voice who are trying to say it was a very noble thing and their shrines to some of these satis in Rajasthan where they're quite popular sites of pilgrimage. That's such a complex history, isn't it? It's trying to unpick what was happening. If you've got 84 women jumping on the pyre, that can't have all been forced. That's got to be something else that was going on there. I'll be back with Mary after this short break. I'm Professor Susanna Lipskin.

and on not just the Tudors from History Hit, my guests and I run through the full gamut of human emotion and experience. From the heartbreak of the Virgin Queen. Elizabeth, not being able to marry, arguably the only man in the world she ever really wanted to marry, may have, for that reason, not married anyone else. To a prenatal battle of the sexes. A male and a female seed meet in the womb at conception,

and whichever one is stronger determines the sex of the unborn child. from Lady Jane Grey facing her executioner. You can't help but feel just the utmost sympathy for this young girl. To why the Laughing Cavalier is, well, laughing. He strikes me as someone who goes off on a sort of swaggering booze up. Subscribe now to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Other reasons why people would offer themselves up as sacrifice,

was there a difference between what we would call suicide and self-sacrifice? Yeah, well, that's always the question. is it suicide or is it self-sacrifice? And suicide was condemned in India just as it is in the West. But, you know, in classical antiquity in the West, suicide was fairly acceptable. In Roman culture, for example, it was kind of a noble end to a life well lived that had reached a crisis. Your life had reached a crisis, okay, so you can commit suicide and sort of go out with dignity. But then, you know, as suicide became more common and even slaves started performing suicide,

then it was condemned as, you know, property laws. Jesus. But, you know, there's a lot of ambiguity always in every society about suicide. By the time we get around to the 19th century, and Emil Dürkeheim is talking about suicide outside of the morality of it and talking about it as something that has to be seen in its cultural context, we try to understand this is the act of people who are often separated from larger society. They are alienated from their communities.

And then, you know, finally we now, in modern cultures, I think, you know, we see it as a tragedy and the ultimate example of An Homi. But I think for many ancient cultures, suicide and self-sacrifice have this very blurry line between the two. There's a very blurry line. And we accept that sometimes for a society to be highly functional that we have to allow self-sacrifice. You know, still in modern society, we recognize that soldiers go into war knowing that there's a good chances they're going to be killed. There's a socially acceptable motive there.

No matter how foolish the person may be or rash, we say that's acceptable. But I think in mythology, we will say, okay, there has to be self-sacrifice to create certain structures, social structures that we deem essential. So, for example, Prometheus, right? To create a highly structured society where you have all the necessary components. of social structure, you have to have domesticity. So Prometheus becomes this example of the structure of domesticity. He steals fire from the gods, then he's punished, you know, eternally for having done this. But we say it was worth it for him to take this rash act because he allowed us to

domesticate and build our communities, right? Yes. Yeah. So there are these stories in every culture where, for example, in ancient India, there's the story of the primordial man, Perusha, who decapitates himself. He breaks down his body to create the world. His eyes are the sun and moon, and his voice, speech, the prayers that have to be recited to keep society functional and so on. So I think every society has these stories where we accept that there has to be sacrificed to create a social structure. I'm just thinking, and I'm really sorry I've jumped to this place, but the Titanic, I was watching the film the other day, and that story is part of its mythologies, all these people

that went down with the ship. I was just struck there, but what you're saying, but they're regarded as heroic, almost. Like, there's women and children first kind of mentality and, like, go down with the ship, or, like, soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade so it doesn't get their commanding officer. There are lots of examples of people willingly laying down. their life that we view as not as sad. Well, it is sad, but it's also something necessary. Yeah.

For society. And even, I hate to say this, but even Trump is using this language. He's in his sort of messianic message to his followers. He's saying, you know, I am going through all this for you. Yes. So he's, you know, Jesus was crucified and in the Christian church we'll say it. It said that he gave up his life for us, right? For his followers.

Or in Hinduism, you have the goddess Chinamasta who self-decapitates and feeds the world with the blood from her neck. You know, this idea that we, whoever the divine figure is, it's a kind of reciprocity. So when the devotee or the human person who offers himself or herself is offering to the gods, you're saying, I'm offering something that is irreplaceable. I'm sacrificing, right? And this sacrifice is both an act of devotion and an act of hubris. And it's hubris because you can't repeat this

and you are choosing your own time of death rather than allowing yourself to die when the gods determine you should die. So it becomes almost this act of divinity that challenges the gods. So just as Prometheus challenged the gods by giving human beings fire, you know, he was punished for that. So when you do these things, there is a cost to it, right? The cost is your life when you've self-sacrifice. If you're committing, Sussi, it's fire, but you mentioned decapitation there.

Was that, I don't want to say popular. That's not the word I'm looking for. Was that a popular method? I've read a little bit around that, the idea that there's. The head in particular had very important symbolism and meaning to certain cultures. Yeah. The head is place of thought. In many societies, ancient India thought semen was stored in the head.

Seaman. Yeah. So the Greeks also believe this. This is where, you know, sort of our power, human power is stored in the head in that way. It's also obviously a very final way to die. Yeah. Yeah. there's not many mistakes for that.

The head has all kinds of complex symbolism attached to it. It's a place of powers for some society, it's a place of sexuality, becomes a very definitive thing. And head sacrifice is very different, but head sacrifices were often given to goddesses so that men, warriors, would choose to sacrifice before a great battle. There would be one or two men who would offer themselves to honor the goddess.

Usually in South India, we see there's this goddess Karavite, and she is the conflation of the goddess Durga, who is a northern Indo-European goddess, and who means sort of the implacable and the invulnerable, and a local South Indian war goddess, Karavite. So these two merge their identities often in South India. So before a battle, soldiers would have decapitate, obviously not the whole army, but a few people to ensure victory so that the goddess Kouravai would be fed.

She feeds on the blood of the battlefield to honor her and ensure victory, people would offer themselves. You can't cut off your own head though. I'm just thinking of the logistics of this. Did the soldiers say, I'm going to do this and then somebody else would cut their head off? Or did they try to cut their own head off? Well, we know from these hero stone that they did have these sort of contraptions. It was like two curved blades held together with a chain that you'd put your head through these. And then the chain would go down and you would sort of hunch up, put the chain around your feet.

And when you were ready to take your head off, you'd stretch your legs out. And that would cut the head off. Holy poor. So you'd need to be damn certain about that, wouldn't you? There's no going back from that one. You'd have to be very determined. Is there any sense of who would sacrifice themselves? Like was there any pressure put on a certain group?

Was it often younger people? Or was it just, is your sense it was just somebody would just say, I'll do it? I think it was in these military self-offering, self-sacstacist. I think it was probably young men. The references that we know from the Chilopatikram and some of the other texts that references, these descriptions of it was at night, there was chanting, there was drumming, there was, you know, what they call arena culture, you know, sort of the pressure of people getting intensely motivated under darkness and noise and this feeling of, you know,

I'm going to do something noble. There are these descriptions of young men, you know, deciding to do this before a battle. They were going to be the first offerings of the battle. And I think you find referenced in very similar references in Viking rituals before. You know, the same idea that they're going to be the first blood offered. Those forms of self. sacrifice is that they are incorporated into formal iconographic plans on South Indian Temple Wall so that these other things like Sati, these other kind of spontaneous things that we talked about earlier where you protected a village from a wild animal or something. These are our hero stones that are sort of casually mounted around a village. But these battle offerings

to the goddess Korovai incorporated into formal iconographic plan. Somebody said, okay, we need to sort of make this part of the iconography of this temple. So it's recognized that this is something that's noble to do. I'm kind of glad to hear that it sounds like there was a bit of a show going on when people would step up to go to do this, because I would want a bit of drama. I would want there to be like a crowd and chanting and the whole thing. There are many religions that have altars that were pretty bloody.

Yes. I think there's usually a lot of drama that's associated with it. I mean, drama in the pure sense. I don't mean drama. I got interested in this because I thought, no matter how devout you are, no matter how patriotic you are about your being in country, no one waking in your country. No one wakes up one morning thinks, you know, I'm going to go and offer my life. No. There were stressors that, you know, there were famines. There was persecution. There were pandemics. So you see, again, it's been The Tutta was in India in the 14th century during the time when the Black Death first emerged and along the steps and then eventually made its way into India and then finally to Europe a few years later. So he was there in the 1840s before the Black Death reached Europe. And he describes these incredible scenes of devastation when this pandemic hit. Under those circumstances, people are overwhelmed. You want to bargain with God. You know, if I offer my life, will you spare my family? will you spare my king and my country and, you know, my fellow man if I make this great sacrifice?

So I think, you know, there was a lot of persecution at that time of the establishment of the sultanates, and there was famine that falls pandemics and so on. You know, everyone says the 14th century was hell. It was really, really terrible time to be alive. And I don't think that it's surprising that that was also time when a lot of these events happened. But we also see it in the, again, I mean, one of the reasons why I sort of link this into these disease outbreaks is that you see it also in the 5th and 6th century and 7th century. So we know in the 7th century that, you know, there was also plagues going on. So again, people were, you know, horrified.

And, you know, think of how irrational people were during the pandemic. It's so true, yeah. And we're not that different. We like to think, oh, well, I would never do that. But, I mean, people have become very irrational. Yes, yeah. I mean, I didn't see anybody offering themselves up for sacrifice, but we might have seen like very, very watered down versions of like bargaining with the universe or mythical spirits or gods or whatever of, you know, people using a mask like a talisman and people becoming very, very paranoid and trying to regulate their own behavior. And that's with all of the knowledge of disease and germs and knowing exactly what was going on. And we were still incredibly serious. And in a lot of conspiracy theories, you know, sort of magical beliefs if I do X and such, you know, I won't be ill or, you know, I'm not going to take a vaccine because they want to, you know, infect me with some other disease. When I first started this, this research when I was in grad school, I thought, oh, well, you know, this is interesting because it's so remote from us.

No, it's not. I was just thinking as well the way that we put healthcare workers on a pedestal underpinned by this idea of they might get sick and die that they are risking themselves and sacrificing their own health for us that was a big part of the pandemic as well, wasn't it? Yeah. Wow, maybe we aren't all that far away from this stuff.

Now, you have been fascinating to talk to about this. This has been absolutely amazing. And my last question to you is, as somebody that has studied the practice of self-sacrifice in India, this is a subject that despite being world spread is subject to a lot of stigma and sensationalism. But what is it that you would want people to know about this practice, away from all the kind of the Hollywood and the Indiana Jones movies and all of that stuff? I think we all need to acknowledge that we have some pretty dark stuff inside of it.

I don't think that this was unique. to India, this need to connect to the divine and the extreme forms that people will take to do that. We have accepted for centuries that, for example, that women should, you know, take a backseat in culture and have not, have controlled labor markets so that, you know, some people really have suffered. And so, I mean, we've done some pretty dark things as human things. I don't think this is served by pretending it didn't happen. I think obviously it can be sensationalized and it can be turned into a silly novel or ridiculous movie. But I don't think societies are served by pretending this didn't happen. I think every society

has had a love of sacrifice. In Christianity, we turned a judicial execution into a messianic movement. In ancient Aztec cultures, we're consumed with bloody sacrifice. And yet these cultures also produce great things. So I think we all have that within us. I don't think there's any society that has not sort of looked at this and honored extreme behavior. So I hope we can, it tells us something about ourselves, you know, that we are not as modern as we think we are. We are not as removed from these impulses as we'd all like to pretend we are. I think we're seeing a real return to extremism in religion, in politics, and in how we view society. so it's good to think about that stuff.

I think so. Oh, Mary, you've been wonderful. If people want to know more about you and your research, where can they find you? Are you on social media? Or are you smarter than that? I'm not really on social media very much. I've published, you know, if you go look on some obscure place like J-Story, you can find articles I've written or a book I've written.

Amazing. Thank you so much for talking to me today. You've been an absolute treat. Thank you. It was really interesting to talk to you, too. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Mary for sharing her research. This podcast was produced by Charlotte Long and mixed by Chavon Dale. If you like what you heard, please do follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts

and leave us a review. We really do read them all. We've got episodes on Beastiality and the Hidden Victorian Porn Trade all coming your way. If you like to get in touch, you can also email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. This podcast contains music by Epidemic Sound.