Agnipravesha

(“entering fire”) Death by fire, which
could occur in several different contexts.
This was often used to refer to the
practice of sati, in which a widow would
be burned on her husband’s funeral pyre.
Death by fire was also one of the mandated forms of religious suicide; this
could be done either as a means of relief
for someone afflicted by an incurable
disease, or as part of certain rites of
sacrifice such as the sarvasvara, which
was performed to send the sacrificer
to heaven. By the beginning of the
eighteenth century, religious suicide had
been condemned and had fallen into
disuse. In the nineteenth century, British
horror at the practice of sati led them to
ban it wherever they were able to do so.