Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India

Title: Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India

Author: Catherine Weinberger-Thomas

Translators: Jeffrey Mehlman and David Gordon White

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Place of Publication: New Delhi

Year: 2000

Language: English; translated from French

Binding: Hardcover

Pages: 322

ISBN-10: 0-19-565387-4

ISBN-13: 978-0-19-565387-8

India Club BC: 6285

Description

Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in northern India and extensive analysis of Sanskrit, Hindi, Rajasthani, Tamil and European textual sources, this scholarly study examines sati and related traditions of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Catherine Weinberger-Thomas investigates the religious concepts, ritual structures, narratives and social meanings through which sati has been understood within Hindu traditions.

The author analyzes widow-burning in relation to immortality, sacrifice, karma, gender, caste, divine power, goddess traditions, death rituals and the creation of sacred memory. The study also considers hero stones, sati memorials, protest suicide, bodily mutilation, regional traditions and the relationship between colonial descriptions, modern law and indigenous interpretations.

Rather than treating sati solely as an isolated social custom, the book places it within a wider cultural and religious system while subjecting its texts, rituals and representations to anthropological and psychoanalytic interpretation. The volume is an important research resource for women’s studies, religious studies, social and cultural anthropology, South Asian history, ritual studies and the study of death and commemoration.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Funereal Prelude

A Burning in Bali

A Question of Words

Immortality: Time Reckoned

The Truth about Women

Speech as Instrument

Sexual Colorings

Living Satis

Blue as Blood

Trial by Fire

Fire and the Fault of Karma

Handprint, Dagger, and Lemon

Mutilation and Voluntary Death

Rhetoric of Protest Suicide

Dizzying Heights of Violence

The Trammels of Resentment

A Rite of Exorcism

The Offering of the Self

The Fruits of One’s Acts

The Corporality of the Dead

Death in the Telling

Rite and Belief

A Sati on the Shore of the Ganges

A Sati in Surat

The Dream as Proof

The Transmission of the Deadly Vow

Love in the Extreme

Under the Spell of Sacrifice

The Goddess’s Body

Sati Divine, Earthly Satis

Cult and Apotheosis

Shekhavati, an Endangered Region

Belief and Mystification

True and False Traditions

Cross-Examination of a District

The Rite, the Law, and the Custom

Ritual and How to Use It

A Sati in Poona

Shared Passions

Menstruation and the Final Oblation

The Seasonal Fault

A Foreword in Retrospect

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Condition

New and unused hardcover copy from India Club’s preserved inventory. Stored securely in a protective plastic covering.