Woman Committing Sati, folio from an Album

This painting dramatically represents a young woman about to commit sati, or self-immolation. The literary subject of a woman’s sacrificing herself on the funeral pyre of her dead husband was popularized in seventeenth-century Iran through the poet Naw'i Khabushani’s narrative Suz u Gudaz (Burning and Melting). Set in India, the poem tells of a Hindu bride who vows to cast herself on her bridegroom’s pyre and will not be dissuaded, even by the Mughal emperor himself. In many ways, however, this painting does not correspond to Naw'i’s text: the inscription beneath the painting is unrelated to the poem, the body of the bridegroom is missing from the pyre, key figures (such as the Mughal prince who accompanies the bride to the pyre) have been omitted, and the bride’s disrobing is uncalled for. Moreover, examination under transmitted light reveals no traces of text on the reverse side of the manuscript. In this illustration the young woman kneels next to a small pyre. She rends her gown in grief, exposing her naked torso, and pulls out locks of her hair, which she casts into the fire. Two other women try to restrain her; below them a man crouches, his turban undone and his facial features contorted with grief. Opposite the fire, an older man sits hunched over, his eyes closed. At the horizon is a group of male observers, the one on the right wearing a European hat. Dramatic clouds bracket a tree with leaves similar to those found in early seventeenth-century Mughal paintings. One may conclude that this painting, which blends Persian and Indian elements with European techniques of modeling and shading and demonstrates knowledge of and interest in the female body, was created as a single-page work illustrating the exotic topic of sati and eroticizing the foreign (here Hindu) woman. This hybrid style is characteristic of Safavid painting in the second half of the seventeenth century.