ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the self-sacrifice in traditional India which was usually performed in fulfilment of a vow, and those vows were for a variety of expressed religious, political, military, and social reasons, or as stress response to disease, warfare, famine, or drought. In particular, north Indian martial culture was more enthusiastically committed to the social controls offered by suttee and jauhar, which while religiously sanctioned did not have direct interaction with a deity. India explored the idea of the king as the ultimate symbol of the coherent stable centre. When a king died it was not unusual for him to be accompanied by his wives and concubines who joined him on the funeral pyre as satis. Male retainers were also known to sometimes join their lord in death. A great king should engender such love and devotion. This is an Indian tradition that continued down the centuries; it is part of both mythic metaphor and historic fact.
