Arrian, in the opening chapters of the seventh book of his Anabasis, gives an account of Alexander’s dealings with the Gymnosophists of Taxila which agrees in substance with that given by Strabo (XV. i. 61-65) based on the authority both of Aristoboulos and Onesikritos, the latter of whom was sent by Alexander to converse with the gymnosophists. For the details see [Biog. Appendix], s.v. Kalânos.
Note Ii.—Suttee (Diod. Note 12).
But Diodôros, in a subsequent part of his history (xix. 33), relates that the law had been enacted because of the great prevalence of the practice of wives poisoning their husbands. In c. 34 he states that the two widows of Kêteus, an Indian general who fell in the great battle in Gabienê between Eumenes and Antigonos, contended for the honour of being burned on the funeral pile of their husband, and that the younger was selected for the distinction, because the elder, being at the time with child, was precluded by law from immolating herself. Strabo says (XV. i. 62) that Aristoboulos and other writers make mention of Indian wives burning themselves voluntarily with their husbands.
From this it would appear that this cruel practice, known as Suttee (Sansk. satî, “a devoted wife”), which was suppressed by the humanity of the Indian Government in the days of Lord Bentinck, was one of high antiquity, but Mr. R. C. Dutt, in his able and learned work on Civilisation in Ancient India, assigns a much later date to its origin. He says (vol. iii. 199) that the barbarous rite was introduced centuries after Manu, whose Institutes, he thinks, were compiled within a century or two before or after the Christian aera. In a subsequent passage (p. 332) he states that Suttee was originally a Scythian custom, and was probably introduced into India by the Scythian invaders who poured into India in the Buddhist age (from 242 B.C. to 500 A.D.), and formed ruling Hindu races later on. There can be no doubt that Suttee was a Scythian practice. Their kings were entombed with sacrifices both of beasts and of human beings of both sexes, as we see from what Herodôtos relates in the seventy-first chapter of his fourth book. Still the statement of Diodôros shows that several centuries before the Skythian invasions of India took place Suttee was an established institution among a race of the purest Aryan descent such as were the Kathaians—a people whose name shows they were Kshatriyas. The Hindus themselves believe that the custom was of the very highest antiquity, and that a text of the Rig-veda sanctioned its observance. It has been discovered, however, that the text in question has been falsified and mistranslated, and that in point of fact no mention is found of the custom in Sanskrit literature till the Pauranik period, the beginning of which Mr. Dutt assigns to the sixth century of our aera.
Note Kk.—Ancient Indian Coins
Fig. 16.—Antimachos.
Fig. 17.—Agathoklès.
