Sati

The story of Sati, or Uma as she was first called, is a compelling condensation of two major themes in the evolution of the Hindu worldview. The first is the desire to exalt the socially conformist view against the dangerous seductiveness of the renunciation option. The second was the assimilation of the Mother Goddess into the rules of the game, as played by the establishment. The Sati story is interesting precisely because both these imperatives failed. The story as it exists today is a memory of a misfire; it is a pioneering effort that did not succeed. The chaotic and incomplete nature of the tale, its remarkable levels of violence, and its establishment of a correlation between sacred geography and the body of the goddess, prove it to be a tale worth taking far more seriously than has been done till now. For Sati is all but blanked out of the mind today. She is stated to have been reborn as Parvati and married Shiva again and that is the official and accepted deity to worship. Sati is remembered only as a preliminary failure before the faithful got it right in her next incarnation. As we shall see, nothing could be further from the truth.

Sati was the daughter of one of the mind born sons of Brahma, the Prajapatis. His name was Daksha and he was the chief Prajapati. In the Vedic pecking order that meant a very important person indeed, as he was in charge of all the Cosmic Sacrifices, the Yagyas, made by man or god. Sati was a carefree young girl until Brahma decided to intervene and get her married off to Shiva. This was not out of purely altruistic motives. Shiva was a yogi and he derived much amusement from observing the hapless state which marriage had reduced Brahma and Vishnu to, at frequent intervals. Himself being free and a wanderer, much prone to forests, mountains and cremation grounds as his notion of an ideal residence, he was in no mood to ever get married. It would interfere with his Yoga practices too much! Brahma however, was determined to tame Shiva, to bring Him into the ambit of domesticity and family, to, in short, assimilate what had always been Hinduism's defiant and flamboyant Outsider God. The ostensible reason proffered is that if Shiva, whose name literally means, 'The Auspicious', did not participate in activities of the world, (as the householder in the grihasta-ashrama stage of life is supposed to do), he would be setting a bad example and encouraging the unraveling of society - everybody would be jumping the gun straight into renunciation.

This project had the enthusiastic approval of all the other gods, a married Shiva would presumably be more amenable to reason and less, for want of a better word, peculiar. Shiva was the greatest of all the devas, Mahadeva, no doubt, but he was so lacking in couth and style. It was a Cosmic Humiliation. In this narrative is clearly seen orthodox Hindu society's deep ambivalence and abiding fear of the wild and passionate Hunter God, ever prone to do things on higher impulse and not according to the Law. Rudra-Shiva was simply too disturbingly independent of all restraints including that of morality, for he acknowledged only the Cosmic Ethic, Rtha. To bring him into the fold of the official, but by no means dominant, culture was a matter of paramount import.

In some versions of the myth, the gods actually go to the Great Goddess and explain that only she can assist them in this civilizing project they all hold dear. The Goddess agrees that Shiva is too prone to either meditate or run around as the Ultimate Loose Cannon. She also agrees to be born as Sati and marry him. When Shiva is gingerly approached with this eccentric idea of marriage, he flatly states that he is too much of a handful for any woman. He is too peculiar in his behavior for any cultured woman to put up with. He on the other hand is also, paradoxically, the Lord of all Fine and Performing arts and he would occasionally like to talk to his wife about aesthetics. Furthermore, he plunges into meditation for years at a time and he could not ask his wife to just stand around and wait. When he is not in meditation he is roaming around the universe with a set of hell raisers. Which woman would accommodate so many contradictory and infuriating aspects? The gods promise to find somebody who is in every way his equal, and extract a promise that he would then marry this paragon. That worthy is of course the Great Goddess whose eccentricities and wildness is on par with Shiva.

The divine safe Narada hurries to meet Sati and so praises Shiva that she resolves to have no other husband. He advises her that Shiva is not the sort of person to be impressed by her astonishing beauty and that devotion and the austerities of askesis are the way to his heart. Sati begins a series of yogic practices that leave the gods awestruck, so difficult are they and Shiva relents. However, Sati's father Daksha is not at all pleased at his daughter's choice of husband. This wild god, who does not even participate in the sacrificial ceremonies, is every parent's worst nightmare as to an unsuitable groom. However, Sati holds firm, the first sign that we are talking about a society in transition. In the Parvati Myth she asks permission from her father, (It's the mother who objects) whereas she flatly refuses to be obedient here. Women had a greater say in these matters and this rebellious streak in the Great Goddess represents an original independence of women that patriarchal society had not yet managed to subdue. Shiva confirms Daksha's worst apprehensions as his idiosyncratic sense of humor leads him to assume his most horrifying shape and come dancing in frenzy to Daksha's house to marry Sati. Like all people who are in a socially prestigious position, Daksha had very little sense of humor and he never forgave Shiva for this prank. Shiva as the Outsider God was of course manifesting his yogic contempt for hierarchies, for position, and the puffed up ego that comes from money and easy acclaim.

Married life was extremely agreeable for Shiva, as Sati proved to be more than an ideal match for him and in total agreement with all his apparent wild ways. One day however, she observed great numbers of people heading in one particular direction and sent to know where they were going. To her surprise she learnt that her father was holding a great fire sacrifice, to which he had called all the principal gods but pointedly excluded his daughter and son-in-law. He husband was amused at this rudeness more than anything else. He was a yogi and cared not a straw for rituals and ceremonies. Sati urged him to attend but he declined, knowing that Daksha would be intolerably insulting and then the wrath of Rudra would pour forth. He really did not want to kill his wife's father. Sati insisted on going herself, arguing that a daughter does not require a formal invitation. This is her second act of independent assertion and shows, yet again, that the assimilating forces of the Mainstream had not yet managed to swallow the independent power of action of the Goddess. It is a situation that later patriarchal commentators find unbearable and they interpolated a passage that said that Shiva mentally renounced his wife for this act of disobedience. So there! The feisty and troublesome woman is put in her place!