Tale of Padmini

Padmini, a queen of Mewar, was renowned for her incomparable beauty. Ala-ud-din, the notorious Afghan invader, determined to take Chitor and capture her. His initial charges proved unsuccessful, but lust spurred him on. Finally, frustrated, he submitted a compromise: he would withdraw his troops if he could be allowed but a glimpse of the fair lady's face. The Maharana consented but stipulated that to protect Padmini's modesty, the Muslim would only be able to see her face reflected in a mirror. The offer having been accepted, the queen was taken to a palace in the middle of a large tank. She stood next to a window with her back toward the outside. Ala-ud-din was placed in a building at the edge of the tank, from which considerable distance he was allowed to catch a fleeting glimpse of Padmini's reflection in a mirror, which was held up to the queen for a few seconds. Far from satisfying his desire, this vision inflamed it. He decided to double-cross the Maharana and make Padmini his own.
Because the Muslim had arrived in Chitor alone and thus demonstrated his faith in Rajput honor, the Maharana felt compelled to return the compliment by personally accompanying him back to his camp. When they arrived, however, Ala-ud-din took his escort hostage and demanded Padmini as ransom. The Rajput army could not contemplate such a trade. To ask the queen to compromise herself would contravene the Rajput code of honor, which protects women. Padmini herself ordered that the trade be executed but, having sized up Ala-ud-din as no man of honor, also plotted an ambush. She sent Ala-ud-din a message consenting to his terms provided that she be allowed to bring along her belongings and attendants. He agreed. Then the queen ordered many curtained palanquins, which were designed to transport ladies-in-waiting, to be filled instead with soldiers. Because the soldiers who were to be concealed in this way knew they would not be able to defeat Ala-ud-din's powerful army, they prepared themselves to die in a battle of honor, a saka .
When the palanquin procession reached its destination, Padmini asked Ala-ud-din that she be permitted to bid farewell to her husband before leaving him. Having agreed, the Muslim took his bride-to-be to the place where her husband was held captive. As soon as the Maharana's location was known, the Rajput soldiers sprang upon the Muslims and liberated the captive king. In the uproar, both Padmini and her husband managed to escape. Padmini was whisked back to the palace, while the Maharana fled for the hills. Because it was clear that his forces would lose the battle, he retreated so that he might plot an assault on Ala-ud-din at a later more promising moment. Back at Chitor, seeing that the Maharana's forces faced defeat, Padmini led hundreds (some say thousands) of women to the vaults under the palace, where they committed jauhar , mass immolation.[1]
In general, jauhar is understood to accomplish closely related purposes. To begin with, it preserves female virtue.[2] The noblewomen quoted at the very beginning of this chapter said, "Padmini had character and purity; she died by jauhar ." As noted previously, Rajputs have been keen to protect the purity of Rajput blood. Because conquest brought with it the likelihood of rape, they have seen conquest as a threat to family integrity and caste identity. Until now, another woman commented, the purity of Rajput blood has not been diluted. She said that with society changing, that might happen in the future, but said she was proud that "blood-mixing" really had not happened to any appreciable extent as yet.
Jauhar also promotes caste duty, which is symbolized ultimately by the saka , the "cutting down" that ensues. It inspires soldiers to fight unto death, for they have nothing left to lose.[3] Although jauhar often precedes the death of a husband (or a wife's knowledge of the death of her husband), women who so die are referred to as satis . Hence, as a heroic strategist, Padmini enables her husband to face his enemy in battle and then, as a sati , prompts his courage and promotes his honor.[4]
Two matters concerning the Padmini narrative merit immediate attention. First, although Padmini is a sati , she is not simply assimilated to the category of satimata . True, Padmini is a satimata to Sisodiyas. But when Sisodiyas speak of their satimata , they do not single out Pad-mini from other satis . Self-immolation is the basis for the worship she receives as one of the satis whose identities merge into the integrated satimata personage. What causes Padmini's name to be remembered and revered is not just the mode of her death but the manner in which she lived her life.[5] Two women thus summarized their sentiments: "I admire Padmini because she was very clever; she showed the Muslims that!" and "I like Padmini because she met danger when her husband wasn't around to protect her."[6]
This is not to downplay the importance of Padmini's death: it is the climax of the Padmini narrative. One Rajput woman noted that when Padmini leaves the palace to attack Ala-ud-din, "her body becomes hot with sat ," which clearly foreshadows her death as a sati . Acts that make her story something more than a sati scenario, however, are the rescue she plots and the ambush she directs. To execute her plan she abandons her household and takes to the battlefield. For these reasons she is revered even by Rajputs (and others) who do not worship her as a satimata .
Second, Padmini's heroic action contravenes a cardinal rule. Padmini leaves parda . The story builds toward this event and dwells on its significance. The mirror incident, in which Padmini shows her face to Ala-ud-din, portends this trangression. The stereotype of the lustful Muslim is well known to Rajasthani mythology. When the villainous Ala-ud-din sees the reflection of Padmini's face, it is a foregone conclusion that desire will defeat honor and he will conspire to ravish her. The bargain he strikes is thereby transformed from an end in itself to a means of conquest. Furthermore, while the belief that Padmini's body becomes hot when she exits the palace shows that Padmini does not thereby abandon her virtue, it also stresses that she deviates from custom. Her dramatic departure emphasizes that the state of affairs in Chitor has become so perilously chaotic that only Padmini, a woman, can save it. Chitor must suspend its own law to reestablish the order that the law is intended to preserve.
Thus Padmini's departure is richly symbolic and movingly dramatic. In going out to war (over and over, women specified that she went out [bahar ] to fight), she disregards female custom and performs male duty. Treading on male territory she assumes her husband's command. Hence Padmini is heroic not because she fulfills the codified role of the pativrata but because she departs from it to assume another, more urgent, role. When Padmini leaves the household and thereby inverts the relationship between her husband and herself, she abandons the behavior normally incumbent on a pativrata while pursuing a purpose in accord with pativrata duty. This inversion is verified by the story sequence. While Padmini's husband is concealed as a hostage in Ala-ud-din's camp, Padmini leaves her concealment to lead her husband's army. Once she has served in her husband's place to rescue her husband, she retreats to Chitor, which reinverts her inverted status.
Finally, self-immolation proves that her intentions have been pure. She has transgressed boundaries solely to protect her husband and not for self-aggrandizing purposes; she acts for her husband, not herself. The pativrata role encompasses and ultimately revalues violation as consistent with its purpose. It cannot, however, arbitrate the immediate contradiction. Women say that Padmini is a pativrata , but they also say that she is brave (bahadur ) enough to have defied pativrata convention by going out among men. Thus there exists both conjunction and disjunction between Padmini's heroic action and the role of the pativrata . Both are meaningful. They constitute the experience and the end (goal) of conflict. It seems that because Padmini substitutes for her husband, she exempts herself from the rule of support synonymous with the pativrata role, but because she dies as a sati , she shows that she also fulfills the support function she transgressed. In sum, when Padmini crosses back into the zanana , she is not mysteriously "absolved from the sin" of leaving the zanana . Her reentry symbolically, not logically, states both the opposition and consonance of her actions, which have a single intention. Intention is, as always, key.
The symbolism of conflict and conjunction is predominantly spatial. We have seen how protection is located within spheres. The protection offered by pativratas , be they divine (maternal kuldevis ), semidivine (satimatas ), or human, has its source within the boundaries of the zanana . We have also seen that integral to female protection is support of male duty, which is performed on the battlefield. While that support is a mode of protection that accompanies a husband outside the household, it is predicated on the partition of zanana and mardana . Women defend honor by remaining in the zanana. Parda , we have seen, not only builds among men the esprit de corps essential for army life; it preserves and enhances the modesty and purity of women.[7]
Parda , then, represents and cultivates the character of women and men. As their character flourishes so does their reputation, the stuff of which heroism is made. When women acquire sat through chastity, they build good reputations. The reputation of a wife protects and furthers the reputation, and so the honor, of her husband. Because reputation is understood to reflect honor and is thus inseparable from it, female chastity, symbolized by parda , strengthens the character of both women and men and reinforces their respective duties of protection.
Yet Padmini, like other military heroines, abandons parda . When she leaves the female sphere, she no longer functions as a supporter of male duty; she becomes a performer of male duty, which is the very foundation of her heroism. Thus it is not insignificant that in speaking of Padmini Rajput women often remark that they admire her not simply because she was a pativrata but because "she fought like a man." Padmini's stepping out of the zanana constitutes an inversion of feminine and masculine as well as a transformation from housewife to heroine.[8] Such an act is not good in itself. It is good in the context of a highly undesirable state of affairs in which a husband, through death or other incapacitation, cannot carry out his martial duty, a duty predicated on the royal-caste responsibility of protection. Only in such a case may a woman substitute for her husband in order to protect him and, if he is still alive, enable him to protect as his caste responsibility demands.
This point emerges from the "two elephants" variation on the Ruthi Rani story mentioned in the previous chapter. Well before the bard tells Ruthi Rani she must choose between pride and her husband's affection, she ponders whether to lead an army against her husband's enemy while her husband lives. Ashamed that her husband has not led an army to challenge his enemy sooner, she thinks of doing so herself. A bard warns her that if she fights, people will ridicule her husband and destroy his honor, so she chooses not to fight. She leads forces against the Muslims only after her husband's death.
Substituting for a husband is the basis for a woman's heroism. The act is not obligatory but supererogatory and presumably for this reason is deemed heroic. The transgression it entails can be recommended only indirectly by the rare examples of exceptionally courageous (bahadur ) women who face the horrors of battle in violation of their normal and normative code of behavior.
That this violation is conceived as such is clear from two attendant assumptions. First, a hero attains a status that ought to be permanent, and a heroine achieves a status assumed temporary. Individual heroes are worshiped at individual shrines constructed in their honor;[9] heroines, we have seen, are worshiped only as satimatas , in which case they lose their individual identities. Death both validates the inversion undergone by the heroine and confirms pativrata status. In sum, a heroine is admired for her violation but worshiped (if worshiped; the Rani of Jhansi, we shall see, is not) without reference to violation, or for that matter to any other distinguishing acts preceding sati immolation.
Second, female heroism is exceptional and personal. The heroine enters the battlefield unattended by other heroines; other women remain where they should, at home. Thus the heroine has sole charge of her destiny as she battles for the realm. Temporarily transcending the model of spatial support that the zanana offers the mardana , she works alone in a world turned chaotic. Her inversion is task-specific: she is to catalyze a restoration of order. Once she has set the process in motion, she will resume her proper place among other women in the zanana .
The threat of conflict looms large in the story despite the understanding that it is ultimately resolved. The conflict Padmini faces is symptomatic of a more general dilemma. The idea that only Padmini can accept the villain's terms and thus save the king, the protector of the realm, underscores the aforementioned conviction that where conflict has caused order to disintegrate, it may take a woman to restore it. Such is the case with the cosmic conflict described in the Devimahatmya . There, when demons have so demolished the world order that the gods are powerless, the Goddess steps in to set things straight. I never heard women explicitly liken the Padmini story to the Devimahatmya , but even without an implicit comparison the texts reveal a common understanding: when the world has turned topsy-turvy, a female might be able to turn it right side up.[10]
Closely related to this conclusion is the observation that Padmini's departure from parda and assumption of male duty are occasioned by opposition stated in the narrative between the male duty to protect the realm by fighting and the male duty to protect the realm by protecting women.[11] Honor prevents men from relinquishing either goal and so paralyzes them. Only when Padmini takes charge are men delivered from their dissonance. Thus Padmini's inversion not only handles the dilemma of competing pativrata responsibilities, it enables men to act and thereby catalyzes a battle for restoration.
In sum, restoration of order means that conflict has been resolved and that conflict had existed. If restoration has been effective, actual, not apparent, conflict must have been overcome. This being so, what is to be made of the symbolism of Padmini's return to the zanana and of the conviction that her pativrata status has not been interrupted or diminished? Two thoughts come to mind. On the one hand, women clearly assume that the military heroine crossing out of parda internalizes the (sexual) control that parda symbolizes. It would seem she takes parda and the sat it has built with her and so is not judged immodest. Perhaps this thought explains why some variants on the Padmini and Hari Rani stories describe the heroines' faces as still veiled, though most I have come across describe heroines as out of parda and without veil (ghunghat ) or mention no veil.[12] (Presumably a veil would make fighting especially troublesome.) In any case, the internalization of parda is verified by her death as a sati . Even where death occurs not through fire but in battle, it verifies internalization, for the heroic Rani of Jhansi, who is felled while fighting, bears the sati epithet.[13]
On the other hand, when a woman leaves the household she implicitly assumes male purpose and duty, so that the person outside parda is perhaps not quite the person who was inside it, although the outsider still intends to return once her task is accomplished. In other words, the person who conforms to the pativrata paradigm may be thought of as not really leaving the zanana and its parda ; while absent from the zanana and performing male duty, the heroine may be not quite herself. Her intentions and so her honor would remain veiled by parda , which is located at home. Reentry would then signal a symbolic confirmation of the pativrata 's continued presence in the zanana .
In either case, it seems to me, the heroine gains a mode of control generally attributed to men. The chastity she has exercised in the zanana , chastity protected by males and protecting them on the battlefield, now empowers and protects her as she sets out for war. Her chastity protects her person as she fights for her husband; as she fights for him she is able to protect the chastity of her person.
The heroine's internalization of parda and assumption of male identity conjointly reveal a further valence of boundary symbolism. This is the idea, widespread in Rajasthan as elsewhere in India, that marriage merges the discrete male and female into a single symbolic personage. The notion that a woman is part of her husband pervades Indian classical and popular culture. A man needs a wife to become whole. Without one, he cannot perform essential Hindu rituals. This idea finds expression in the familiar image of Ardhanarishvara, Shiv as half himself and half his wife, Parvati.[14] In commenting on the behavior of Padmini and other heroines, a thakurani from a leading Mewar estate made explicit reference to this image. Having said that these women were pativratas and that being a pativrata is a woman's highest duty, she said: "I'd give my life for my husband [also]. You can defame God but not a husband. I am half his body; I'd do any sacrifice for him."
If we apply this notion, substitution for the husband could also represent merging with him. The heroine, having united with her husband through performance of his role, becomes the recipient of her own power. She acts for him; he acts through her. Her passage into male space transforms her so that she is both heroine and masculine, or at the very least male-like.
This transformation of Padmini's power as she enters the battlefield would seem to emphasize the functional androgyny indicated by staging a military ambush. During this time of disorder, in which customary segregation is suspended, Padmini's performance of her husband's military duty (as strategist and commander) points to the ultimate theoretical harmony of segregated roles. At the same time, the symbolic merging of sexual identities represented by Padmini qua soldier, woman as performer of male caste duty, points to their differentiation in ordinary experience. Padmini's crossings out into battle and back into parda show that the suspension of custom is not final. In the end she resumes her traditional role as is expected. In fact, her crossing out carries overtones of the ritual crossing out of a sati on the way to the pyre.
Recall that when Padmini leaves the palace, her body becomes hot with sat . It is at this precise point, the intersection of inner and outer spheres, that satis traditionally symbolize their intention to die as satis by placing their handprints of wet vermilion on the entry gates. Thus the observation that Padmini becomes hot with sat as she emerges from the palace likens her crossing into the battlefield to the crossing that a sativrata makes as she processes to the cremation ground (mahasatiyam ). That she is a sati —she is full of sat —is clear.
It is tempting to draw out the analogy by suggesting a further comparison between the sati procession and Padmini's caravan procession. In the case of the sati procession, a woman is understood to be going to the mahasatiyam as a bride to be joined once again with her husband: the fire is the basis for both the marriage ceremony and joint cremation.[15] At the same time, the sativrata is technically a widow and the conjunction of bride and widow symbolism expresses the power she possesses and the fear she inspires through her capacity to curse. Padmini is recognized to feign a dowry-carrying procession toward marriage (or perhaps marriage of sorts) with her enemy while truly advancing toward reunion with the Maharana, her husband. Her journey appears to emphasize her fidelity in marriage. Her mission is to liberate her husband in order to enable him to fight, although it is clear that the Rajputs cannot win against the Muslims, who vastly outnumber them.
Given this situation, Padmini's procession portends imminent widowhood; it is a prelude to jauhar . Hence the bride-widow elements of sati symbolism fall easily into Padmini's procession, though their presence is not necessary to prove the significance of the fundamental sati analogy stated by Padmini's manifestation of sat .
The fact that Padmini will die a sati , although no actual sati procession is possible under the circumstances, is plain from the time she disingenuously agrees to Ala-ud-din's terms.[16] From this perspective, Padmini, whose sat is manifest, is a sativrata . She is transformed not simply from wife to heroine but to sati as well. Neither conceptualization will suffice independently. Although Padmini is like a sativrata , she does die a sati ; although Padmini is a sati , she engages in exceptional behavior that does not literally conform to the sati scenario.
Perhaps the best way to conceive the mutuality of the two perspectives—Padmini the sati demonstrating normative pativrata-sati behavior and Padmini the soldier exhibiting extraordinary heroic behavior—is to think of one as the mirror image of the other. The mirrored representation is exactly what is reflects, its equivalent. It is also the opposite of what it reflects and therefore reflects in faithful denial every detail it reproduces. And so the heroine is a sati , which is why her sat manifests. But she is also like the sati in that she plays a perfect (heroic) counterpart, which carries the charge of her story's dramatic emphasis on transgression, both normative and locative.
This transgression, however harmonious with her purpose, is symbolically reversed when Padmini crosses back into parda and resumes the custom of segregation deemed necessary in society. This reentry is understood as the most proximate prelude to death. As Padmini's departure for the battlefield is meaningful in terms of a sativrata 's procession, so her return to the fortress connotes and points toward crossing into fire, which is a salient purpose of reentry. The fortress then takes the place of the mahasatiyam . The husband being alive, jauhar occurs where the husband has lived rather than the place where he is to die.
What, we might ask, would have happened if the Rajputs had won a quick, decisive victory? Would Padmini then have had no need to kill herself? Would not reentry then be robbed of half its meaning and symbolize not legitimation but aggregation? Would Padmini still have been a paragon of virtue? Such questions force issues not to be forced. Symbolism is meaningful relative to the situations in which it is found. To alter its premise or artificially expand its context is to invite unsound speculation. Moreover, even to conduct interviews to determine what would have happened if only this or that element of the story were changed, would mean asking respondents to disrupt the relations among story elements and damage the narrative's integrity. In the Padmini story, death makes sense of the events it follows. It confirms the reversion of the transformation essential to female heroism, even if individuals interviewed do not expressly articulate this notion in equivalent terms. As myths are social institutions, their meaning cannot be wholly explained by individuals called upon to dissect them.[17] The efficiacy of the symbols they comprise exists within the arena of social consciousness, elements of which individuals may not be consciously aware. Thus the question to be posed is not whether death is required and if not, what then; rather, it is what death means where it occurs and then, in a similar vein, whether its occurrence has a meaningful pattern elsewhere in the culture's myth and ritual.
We have seen already that death validates purity of intention in the Padmini story and, more generally, in the immolation ritual. Death as a sati , a true sati , proves purity of the heart. Given the analogy and equation of the Padmini story and the sati scenario, we have concluded that death as validation both justifies what has preceded the story's climax and catalyzes and constitutes that climax. It is, however, legitimate and advisable to inquire whether such a death is typical of stories that tell of situations similar to the one Padmini faced. The context of a symbol is defined not only by the story in which it is found but by those stories utilizing the same thematic and symbolic elements. The stories must be drawn from the same social element. Still, not any old myth available from that element will suffice. Preliminary relevance must exist not in the mind of the researcher but in the minds of the storytellers. Thus here I invoke only those myths chosen by Rajput women as bearing on the question at hand: the exemplification of good Rajput character.
Given this limitation, I find it significant that the myths told by Rajput women conclude with the death of the protagonist. Even Mira, whose behavior bears little obvious resemblance to that of the heroines discussed in this chapter, dies a legitimizing death. Death is an essential aspect of all their stories' meanings.[18] To illustrate this point it will prove fruitful to compare the Padmini story with the stories of the only other exemplars whose stories are mentioned with any regularity.

[1] This representative narrative is a condensation of what Tod gives as two episodes. In Tod, Ala-ud-din takes time to recoup his losses and then begins another attack. Jauhar follows this attack, in which the Maharana is killed. No respondent mentioned two attacks or the circumstances surrounding the Maharana's death, which is central to Tod's detailed account (Annals and Antiquities 1:212–16). Tod identifies Padmini's husband as Bhim Sinh, but official palace records at Udaipur identify the king as Ratan Sinh. Bhim Sinh belonged to the collateral branch of the family at Sisoda.
[2] In the Rajasthani Sabd Kos the first definition of jauhar is "jewel" (ratna ). The second is "proof" (pramana ) of the "character" (svarup ) of a sword as seen by fineness of the striations in its iron. The third is "quality, beauty, character" (vishesta, khubi, gun ). The fourth is "the mass burning of live Rajput women on a pyre when their husbands, wearing saffron, are about to lose their fort to the enemy, so that the enemy cannot get them." The fifth is the "pyre" (cita ) where such burning occurs. The final, sixth entry ties the "rite" (kriya ) of immolation of anyone (kisi ) to the motive of "revenge" (pratikar ) for
injustice. (It presumably applies to immolations of others besides the Rajput women mentioned in the fourth definition. This is interesting because women sometimes say jauhar punishes enemies by depriving them of the opportunity to satisfy their carnal desires). Jauhar shares basic associations of sat . Like sat , it refers to quality and character; like sati it is proof (of female character and goodness). The link between "gem" and character appears to be the same made in English when we refer to someone as a "real gem." In short, the primary meanings denote character; the derivative meanings refer to the rituals that demonstrate it.
[3] Women's renditions usually mention no children or elderly persons. As we saw in the tale of Guha, a child (unborn) raises an issue of conflicting loyalty that Rajput mythology resolves in various ways. In one myth a sati first cuts her unborn child from her womb. In other stories, women die pregnant or with their children; heirs are smuggled away but everyone else perishes in flames. I saw only one miniature painting of the Padmini jauhar , which depicts women dying together—no children or men. The issue deserves historical study. The point of the Padmini myth told by women, however, seems to be the sacrifices made by women for the encouragement of men.
[4] The enabling function of women's sat is somewhat like the motivational aspect of shakti , the female power discussed widely in literature on women and goddesses in India. My Rajput informants did not invoke shakti in discussions of satis or heroines. They describe the Goddess or a kuldevi as being Shakti (a Sanskritic epithet) or having shakti , but they overwhelmingly speak of satis , heroines, and ordinary women as having and seeking sat , understood as substantive virtue and power. Informants understood what I meant when I spoke of shakti but themselves employed the term sat when talking about women's duties, powers, and goals. Sat is the term they employ when they describe themselves and their motivations in admiring and worshiping kuldevis, satimatas , heroines (and heroes and other deities). See the discussion of sat in chapter 5 and that of jauhar below.
[5] At Chitor there is an annual celebration of heroism known as the Jauhar Mela. Rajputs parade through Chitor to honor the courage of their ancestors. Although the festival focuses on jauhar , it does not bear a specific sati 's name. It takes place on the anniversary of another jauhar , but most Rajputs I know assume it celebrates the jauhar led by Padmini. Its organizers intended the festival to commemorate all three sacks and jauhars at Chitor—they chose the anniversary they did because it is a time when neither students nor farmers are busy. Although the procession commemorates the bravery of Rajput ancestors, it also occasions fiery political speeches and protests against the lawmakers in Delhi for grievances related to the loss of political power.
[6] Almost without exception the women who mentioned Padmini said they admired her because of her bravery. The only woman who made a negative remark about Padmini said that although she was brave, "Padmini should have committed suicide early on; that way there would have been no need for a war!" In other words, she could have done even more for her husband.
[7] The sat that women and men inherit through the blood they increase through appropriate behavior. This notion is illustrated in one thakurani 's claim that "because Padmini and the other heroines like her had good blood, they could fight." Padmini's character, developed by being a pativrata , gives her the ability to perform her husband's tasks. Recall that in the Guha story, the sat of the mother dying as a sati enabled her male descendants to conquer a kingdom. Recall also that in the stories in which women shame their men into fighting, the sat of the mother or daughter encourages the son or husband to fight (myth variants often interchange wife and mother).
[8] A heroine (virangana ) takes a masculine role in various Indian myths and legends. On the use of "male attire, as well as the symbols of male status and authority, especially the sword," see Kathryn Hansen, "The Virangana in North Indian History," Economic and Political Weekly , 30 Apr. 1988, 26–27. An interesting, if partial, South Indian parallel is the Madurai heroine Minakshi, who is trained as a prince (here the heroine does not die but becomes the spouse of Shiv).
[9] See, for example, Sontheimer, "Hero and Sati-stones."
[10] The notion that a woman, presumably weaker than a man, is especially able to demonstrate Rajput heroism brings to mind the theme of the youngest sati , mentioned previously, who is the ideal sati ; she is the weakest, having had the least opportunity to accumulate sat . People dwell on the beauty and fragility of Padmini, presumably because she is so much weaker than one would expect a soldier to be. Cf. Beck's parallel finding that people identify with the youngest sibling in South Indian folk narratives (Three Twins , 35).
[11] On the male duty to protect a woman and the preservation of honor, see Ziegler, "Action, Power," 80.
[12] See also Ann Grodzins Gold, "Stories of Shakti" (paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., March 1989), 15.
[13] Summarizing her assessment of this queen's character, one woman stated, "The Rani of Jhansi was very brave and had good character. She was a lady but she had to come out of parda to fight!"
[14] I am grateful to Dennis Hudson for bringing up this point in discussions of chastity and heroism.
[15] Hence some satis wear wedding dresses. Moreover, as we have seen, a betrothed woman who circumambulates her financé's funeral fire and ascends it, becomes wife and sati .
[16] In one woman's telling of the tale, Padmini wears a wedding dress to the ambush. In another's, Padmini dresses for battle (presumably as a man) and then puts on her wedding dress when she returns to die a sati . In both, wearing a wedding dress is preparation for jauhar .
[17] Victor Turner, "Symbols in Ndembu Ritual," in The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 26–27.
[18] In this respect the heroines' deaths resemble martyrdom. There is, however, a crucial distinction in that martyrs are remembered as heroic individuals as a result of their deaths, whereas these heroines are celebrated because of their behavior while living. Their deaths are far more commonplace than their lives.