Chapter SURPOOSE to SUTTEE of S by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

should be written Shataludr. It is the name of a province in Hind. But I have ascertained from well- informed people that it should be Sataludr, not Shataldudr” (sic).—Ibid. page 52.

c. 1310.—“After crossing the Panjáb, or five rivers, namely, Sind, Jelam, the river of Loháwar, Satlút, and Bíyah.…”—Wassaf, in Elliot, iii. 36.

c. 1380.—“The Sultán (Fíroz Sháh)…conducted two streams into the city from two rivers, one from the river Jumna, the other from the Sutlej.”—Tríkh-i-Fíroz-Sháhí, in Elliot, iii. 300.

c. 1450.—“In the year 756 H. (1355 A.D.) the Sultán proceeded to Díbálpúr, and conducted a stream from the river Satladar, for a distance of 40 kos as far as Jhajar.”—Táríkh-i-Mubárak Sháhí, in Elliot, iv. 8.

c. 1582.—“Letters came from Lahore with the intelligence that Ibrahím Husain Mirzá had crossed the Satlada, and was marching upon Dipálpúr.”—Tabakát-i-Akbarí, in Elliot, v. 358.

c. 1590.—“Subah Dihli. In the 3rd climate. The length (of this Subah) from Palwal to Lodhiana, which is on the bank of the river Satlaj, is 165 Kuroh.”—Ain, orig. i. 513; [ed. Jarrett, ii. 278].

1793.—“Near Moultan they unite again, and bear the name of Setlege, until both the substance and name are lost in the Indus.”—Rennell, Memoir, 102.

In the following passage the great French geographer has missed the Sutlej:

1753.—“Les cartes qui ont précédé celles que j’ai composées de l’Arie, ou de l’Inde …ne marquoient ancune rivière entre l’Hyphasis, ou Hypasis, dernier des fleuves qui se rendent dans l’Indus, et le Gemné, qui est le Jomanes de l’Antiquité.…Mais la marche de Timur a indiqué dans cette intervalle deux rivières, celle de Kehker et celle de Panipat. Dans un ancien itineraire de l’Inde, que Pline nous a conservé, on trouve entre l’Hyphasis et le Jomanes une rivière sous le nom d’Hesidrus à égale distance d’Hyphasis et de Jomanes, et qu’on a tout lieu de prendre pour Kehker.”—D’Anville, page 47.

SUTTEE, s. The rite of widow-burning; i.e. the burning of the living widow along with the corpse of her husband, as practised by people of certain castes among the Hindus, and eminently by the Rajputs.

The word is properly Skt. sati, ‘a good woman,’ ‘a true wife,’ and thence specially applied, in modern vernaculars of Sanskrit parentage, to the wife who was considered to accomplish the supreme act of fidelity by sacrificing herself on the funeral pile of her husband. The application of this substantive to the suicidal act, instead of the person, is European. The proper Skt. term for the act is sahagamana, or ‘keeping company,’ [sahamarana, ‘dying together’].¹ A very long series of quotations in illustration of the practice, from classical times downwards, might be given. We shall present a selection.

We should remark that the word (sati or suttee) does not occur, so far as we know, in any European work older than the 17th century. And then it only occurs in a disguised form (see quotation from P. Della Valle). The term masti which he uses is probably maha-sati, which occurs in Skt. Dictionaries (‘a wife of great virtue’). Della Valle is usually eminent in the correctness of his transcriptions of Oriental words. This conjecture of the interpretation of masti is confirmed, and the traveller himself justified, by an entry in Mr. Whitworth’s Dictionary of a word Masti-kalla used in Canara for a monument commemorating a sati. Kalla is stone and masti=maha-sati. We have not found the term exactly in any European document older than Sir C. Malet’s letter of 1787, and Sir W. Jones’s of the same year (see below).

Suttee is a Brahmanical rite, and there is a Sanskrit ritual in existence (see Classified Index to the Tanjore MSS., page 135a). It was introduced into Southern India with the Brahman civilisation, and was prevalent there chiefly in the Brahmanical Kingdom of Vijayanagar, and among the Mahrattas. In Malabar, the most primitive part of S. India, the rite is forbidden (Anacharanirnaya, v. 26). The cases mentioned by Teixeira below, and in the Lettres Édifiantes, occurred at Tanjore and Madura. A (Mahratta) Brahman at Tanjore told one of the present writers that he had to perform commemorative funeral rites for his grandfather and grandmother on the same day, and this indicated that his grandmother had been a sati.

The pr actice has prevailed in various regions besides India. Thus it seems to have been an ea rly custom among the heathen Russians, or at least among nations on the Volga called Russians by Mas’udi and Ibn Fozlan. Herodotus (Bk. v. ch. 5) describes it among certain tribes of Thracians. It was in vogue in Tonga and the Fiji Islands. It has prevailed in the island of Bali within our own time, though there accompanying Hindu rites, and perhaps of Hindu origin,—certainly modified by Hindu influence. A full account of Suttee as practised in those Malay Islands will be found in Zollinger’s account of the Religion of Sassak in J. Ind. Arch. ii. 166; also see Friedrich’s Bali as in note preceding. [A large number of references to Suttee are collected in Frazer, Pausanias, iii. 198 seqq.]

In Diodorus we have a long account of the rivalr