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Voluntary Deaths under Other Religions
in heaven for as many years as there are hairs on the human body, viz. 3 1/2 crores of years. In heaven she, being solely devoted to her husband and praised by bevies of heavenly damsels, sports with her husband for as long as the rule of fourteen Indras. That woman who ascends the funeral pyre when the husband dies is equal to Arundhati in her character and is praised in heaven." According to Harīta: "that woman who follows her husband in death purifies three families viz. of her mother, of her father and of her husband." "But there are old commentators who are opposed to this custom."
I may also add that in ancient Greece and Egypt there appear to have been instances of forced or voluntary selfimmolation of women. History records instances of vassals and slaves committing suicide with their kings or noblemen on the same principle of the Hindu belief underlying the Sati. Reference may be made to the whole communities in Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries having resorted to death or burnt themselves to death from religious motives. Opposition seems to have been voiced from time to time to such practices on the ground that self-destruction was most horrible. Plato and Aristotle object to self-destruction " as cowardice and an offence against the state which loses an individual."8
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In South India, we have instances of memorials erected in honour of women who died by Sati in the form of Mastical, that is, Maha Satı Kal.' In the case of kings or generals who died of heroic acts their memories are glorified by Veeragals, that is, stones for heroes. Such stones are found both in Karnataka and in Tamil Nadu. Sometimes they contain inscriptions which give interesting accounts of the person whose memory is perpetuated. Such stones bear some figures carved on them; emblems of the sun and the moon
7. Ibid., pp. 144-145.
8. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. XII, p. 30.
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