" SATI" NOT PECULIAR TO INDIA.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—It is not safe to argue from sati that the Western mind can never comprehend the Eastern (see Spectator of August 11th, p. 197). " The faithful wife "—for that is what sati means—is not peculiar to India; in the South Seas, for example, she buries herself in her husband's grave (see Tyler's "Primitive Culture "). But in Central Europe in the eighth century A.D. she had herself burnt in orthodox fashion on her husband's funeral pyre.
St. Boniface, the Apostle of Germany (himself an Englishman), and five German Bishops wrote in 745, or thereby, to Ethelbald, sixth Christian King of Mercia, a long letter congratu- lating him on his munificence and many virtues as repressor of rapine and defender of widows and the poor But they remonstrated strongly with him on his systematic "luxury and adultery," especially as, if his correspondents were rightly informed, he indulged his passions mainly at the expense of " holy nuns and virgins dedicated to God" in monasteries. In respect of the sanctity of the marriage bond, they say, the very pagans of Germany are a reproach to their dearest son. In Old Saxony, if a maiden brings shame on her father's house, or a wife on her husband's by adultery, they hang her by a noose until dead, burn her body, and over it bang her corruptor. Or sometimes the women of the country turn out and thrash their unchaste sister from village to village, cutting her also with their knives, till she falls dead, or almost dead, with blows and wounds. Further," the Winedi, who are the vilest and lowest race of men, maintain with such zeal mutual love iu matrimony that the woman, when her own husband dies, refuses to live. And she is reputed amongst them a praiseworthy woman because with her own hand she inflicts death on herself, and is burnt on one pyre along with her husband." The Winedi are the Slavic people of Central Europe, whose language the Wends in the kingdom of Saxony still speak. The Aryan theory as now accepted does not permit us to suppose that the Aryan Slays brought sati with them from India; it is more probable that sati in India is itself an aboriginal custom not introduced by the Aryans (who, as we are now taught, may have come into India from Europe).
I translate the last sentence and abridge the rest from the letter of Boniface and the other Bishops as printed in Haddon and Stubbs, " Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents," Vol. III., pp. 350-56 (1871).
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