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According to Hindu tradition, a widow cannot remarry. She has to hide in the house, remove her jewellery and wear the colour of mourning. She becomes a source of shame for her family, loses...
Mar 1, 2023 · Brick’s new book, “Widows Under Hindu Law,” is a detailed textual and historical analysis of four widow-related topics in India: widow remarriage and levirate; widows’ rights of inheritance; widow-asceticism; and the custom of sati, a former practice in India where a widow burned herself to death on her husband’s funeral pyre.
The introduction begins by explaining the scholarly value of an exhaustive history of widows under Hindu law. For scholars of colonial and modern India, such a history provides crucial context for understanding important colonial debates on Hindu widows.
Apr 23, 2023 · In December 1829, Lord William Bentinck, the first governor general of British-ruled India, banned sati, the ancient Hindu practice of a widow immolating herself on her husband's funeral pyre.
Mar 23, 2023 · This chapter focuses on one particular legal issue involving widows over which there was much disagreement in Dharmaśāstra works of the ancient and medieval periods. This issue is a widow’s right to inherit her deceased husband’s property.
In this book, David Brick offers an exhaustive history of the treatment and status of widows under classical Hindu law, or Dharmasastra as it is called in Sanskrit, which spanned approximately the third century BCE to the eighteenth-century CE.
The first major developments in the treatment and status of widows under Hindu law begin around the fifth century CE and take place especially during the second half of the first millennium.
