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302
VAIDIC AUTHORITY FOR THE
as I observed before, are enjoined to be addressed to the widow, lying on the funeral pile of her husband, and therefore have no relation with the seventh.
Had there been no explicit Vaidic injunction for Sahamarańa, these passages, taken by themselves, would certainly have justified the conclusion that the Rigveda prohibits or ignores, by these texts, the selfimmolation of a Satí, but when we find in the Aukhya Sákhá of the Taittiriya Sanlitá, the Satí's address to Agni while throwing herself into it, and thus discover the Vaidic sanction for concremation, we must pause before we regard the eighth verse as an authority against this tragic act.
The Mímánsákára wonld argue thus,-"Where there are two authorities of a contradictory character, but of equal cogency, an alternative must be supposed to have been allowed'.” The Sútrakáras, upon the Vaidie anthorities above set forth, direct that the widow as well as the sacrificial utensils of the deceased Bráhmana should be placed upon his funeral pile; but, as the widow has a will of her own, she cannot be disposed of like the inert utensils. The Rigveda therefore gives her the option of sacrificing herself or not, according as she may or may not have her courage “screwed up to the sticking place."
When the Satí lies on the funeral pile, it is presumed?
gaafartù fama: 1 Gotama quoted by Kullúkabhatta in his Com. on Manu, v. 14, B. 2, which see.
? Sayana, when he says, in his Commentary on the Sth Rich:
