Suttee (Sans, sati, from sat, pure), properly, a chaste and virtuous wife, but commonly used to designate the self-immolation of a widow by burning herself with the dead body of her husband. The practice has existed for many centuries, not only in India but in other Asiatic countries. Diodorus Siculus gives an instance which occurred in the army of Eume-nes more than 300 years B. C, and in India it is certainly of great antiquity, though the period of its origin is unknown. It was more prevalent there than elsewhere, from the belief encouraged by the Brahmans, and professedly derived from their most sacred books, that it conferred the highest merit not only on the widow herself, but on her dead husband. It was asserted by the Brahmanical writers that every woman who thus burned herself should remain in a region of joy with her husband 35,000,000 years, while otherwise she would have no place in paradise. The prevalence of the practice is to be attributed to belief in this view, rather than to any other influence. A careful study of the Vedas and the Institutes of Manu has shown, however, that these works not only do not command suttee, but impliedly prohibit the practice.

Certain passages of the Vedas supposed to relate to it have been the subject of animated controversy among Anglo-Indian scholars. The practice prevailed long after the East India company came into power. The Mohammedan emperor Akbar prohibited it in the 16th century, but without much effect. In the first quarter of the present century several unavailing attempts to repress it were made by the company, and in the 12 years between 1815 and 1826 there were 7,154 cases of suttee officially reported in Bengal alone. In 1829 Lord William Bentinck, governor general, enacted a law declaring all aid, assistance, or participation in any act of suttee to be murder, and punishable as such. This measure created much excitement at first in Bengal, the Brahmans denouncing it with great violence as an interference with their religion, and even sending an agent to England with a large sum of money to procure its repeal; but it was rigidly adhered to, and the excitement soon subsided. In 1847, during Lord Hardinge's administration, the prohibitory edict was extended to the native states in subsidiary alliance with the government of India, and the practice is believed now to be extinct. - The mode of performing suttee was much the same throughout India, varying only according to the rank of the parties or the customs of each province.

The widow, seating herself by the side of her husband's body, had the sides of her feet painted red, and then bathed herself and dressed in her finest clothes. Meantime a drum was beaten through the adjacent villages. A large company having assembled, a hole was dug in the ground, and a bed formed of green boughs, on which was reared the funeral pile of dry fagots, hemp, clarified butter, and other combustibles. The widow then gave her ornaments to her friends, painted her forehead, tied red cotton round her wrists, put two new combs in her hair, and, when the body of her husband was placed upon the pile, walked around it seven times, scattering parched rice and cowries, and finally ascended the pile, to which she was secured with ropes. The eldest son or the head man of the village usually lighted the pile. In Orissa the pyre was below the level of the ground, and the widow threw herself down upon it. The practice of suttee never prevailed S. of the Kistnah.