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anything of the sort. But the writers who favoured the custom of sati read agne or agnehin place of agre,i.e. they read the quarter as ārohantu janayo yonimagne or agneh. The quarter was thus forced to mean ‘may the wives mount on the place of Agni'or 'oh Agni, may the wives mount on (your) place' thereby neglecting that if agne were vocative the accent of the end of the mantra would be totally different. It is surprising how the author of the Brahmapurāna and of the commentary Aparārka say that the Rgveda recommends self-immolation (rgvedavādāt sādhvi stri na bhaved ātmaghātini – Brahmapurāņa quoted by Aparārka p.111). Aparārka specifies that by rgvedavāda we have to understand mantras like 'imā närir avidhavaḥ ... Rv. 10. 18.7.
It should be by now clear that the Vedic literature does not offer a single instance of any widow having committed sati. Next, it has to be remembered that none of the Grhyasūtras like the Āśvalāyana and the Samkhāyana, nor the eariler Smstis like those of Manu and Yājñavalkya prescribe immolation by a widow. The first clear statement that a widow should burn herself with her dead husband is found in the Vişnusmrti of about the third century A. D. The statement runs as: mste bhartari brahmacaryam, tadanvārohanm vă 25.14 It should be noted that this first statement does not make it obligatory on the part of the widow to follow the dead husband on the funeral pyre, it is mentioned as an alternative of second preference, and not the first. The author of the Vişnusmrti would want the widow to lead the life of a celibate as her first preference. Explaining the reasons for this order of preferences a late text, Smrti Candrikā of Devaņņabhatta (13th century A.D.), observes that the life of a celibate (brahmacarya) is to be preferred because it leads to the world of Brahman, whereas self-burning would secure heaven, i.e. a fruit of less value (tatrāpi brahmacarye vyavasthānam uttamo dharmaḥ brahmalokaprāptikāratvāt ... etad dharmāntaram (i.e. anvārohanam) api brahmacaryadharmāj jaghanya nikrstaphalavat, V.R. Gharpure's edn p. 254).
We may hasten to add that according to Angiras', whose opinion is cited in Aparārka, even this second preference alternative was not to be resorted to by a Brāhmaṇa woman. If she were to commit sati that would constitute the selfkilling and hence would neither lead herself nor her husband to heaven (yā stri brāhmanajātiya mstaṁ patim anuvrajet / să svargam ātmaghătena nātmānam na patim nayet)*.
This situation however, changes in the 6th - 7th centuries A.D. when Vedavyasa in his smrti recommends sati not only to Brāhmaṇa women but gives self-immolation first preference over the life of penances (mrtam bhartāram ādāya brāhmani vahnim āviset! jivanti ... tapasā soșayed vapuḥ 2.53).
Madhu Vidyā/474
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