A faithful, virtuous wife; especially one who burns herself with the corpse of her husband. [P Ramanatha Aiyer’s The Law Lexicon]

Sati was the ancient custom of a widow ascending the funeral pyre with her dead husband. This was an old Aryan custom, found among the ancient Indo-European races and mentioned in the Atharva Veda as primeval custom. The custom lingered in India and was invested with such a halo of sanctity by a newly invented ideal of superhuman chastity and love as made woman, who became Satis, glorified beings, more divine than human. But there were very few real Satis. Many of the widows, who in their paroxysm of grief, or forced by their relatives, became satis, had to be burnt with such barbarous cruelty as would shock the most hardened mind. In Rajputna and Nepal, on the death of a prince, it was not unusual for fifty or sixty women who were his wives and concubines to burn themselves in the funeral pyre as satis. The law has put a stop to this cruel practice based upon a case ideal invented by a fanatical priesthood. [P Ramanatha Aiyer’s The Law Lexicon]