page_title: Sati (practice)
section_title: Principal Smrtis, c. 200 BCE–1200 CE
hierarchical_section_title: Sati (practice) / In scriptures / Principal Smrtis, c. 200 BCE–1200 CE
caption_attribution_description: English: This photograph of a Sati stone (satigal) of 1206 A.D. with old Kannada inscription was taken by me at the Kedareshvara temple (also spelt Kedaresvara or Kedareshwara) in Balligavi (also called variously as Belgami, Belligave, Balligamve and Ballipura in ancient inscriptions) in the Shimoga district of Karnataka state, India. Source: Mysore inscriptions, pg.113, Benjamin Lewis Rice, Director of Public Instruction, Mysore and Coorg, Printed at Mysore Government Press, Bangalore, 1879
context_page_description: The Sati or suttee was a historical practice found chiefly among Hindus in the northern and pre-modern regions of South Asia, in which a widow sacrifices herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre.
  The extent to which sati was practised in history is not known with clarity. However, during the early modern Mughal period, it was notably associated with elite Hindu Rajput clans in western India, marking one of the points of divergence between Rajput culture and Islamic Mughal culture. In the early 19th century, the East India Company, in the process of extending its rule to most of India, initially tolerated the practice; William Carey, a British Christian evangelist, noted 438 incidences within a 30-mile radius of the capital Calcutta, in 1803, despite its ban within Calcutta. Between 1815 and 1818, the number of incidents of sati in Bengal doubled from 378 to 839.
context_section_description: The four works, Manusmṛti (200 BCE–200 CE), Yājñavalkya Smṛti (200–500 CE), Nāradasmṛti (100 BCE–400 CE) and the Viṣṇusmṛti (700–1000 CE) are the principal Smrti works in the Dharmaśāstra tradition, along with the Parasara Smrti, composed in the latter period, rather than in the earlier.
caption: Satigal (sati stone) near Kedareshvara Temple, Balligavi, Karnataka
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