Sati

Hindu goddess, daughter of the demigod
Daksha and wife of the god Shiva, whose
death and dismemberment are pivotal
incidents in the mythology of both Shiva
and the Goddess. According to legend,
after Sati marries Shiva, her father Daksha
feels that Shiva has not shown him proper
respect and develops bad feelings toward
him. Inflated with pride, Daksha plans a
great sacrifice to which he invites all the
gods but deliberately excludes Shiva.
When Sati learns about the sacrifice, she
insists that she wants to go, since it is in
her natal home. Shiva, after trying to discourage her by pointing out that one
should not go without an invitation, finally gives her his permission. When Sati
arrives at the sacrificial grounds and asks
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Sati
Daksha why he has excluded her husband, Daksha responds with a stream of
abuse, excoriating Shiva as worthless and
despicable. Humiliated by these public
insults, Sati commits suicide—in some
versions, by leaping into the sacrificial fire,
in others by withdrawing into yogic trance
and giving up her life.
Shiva, furious at what has happened,
creates the fierce deity Virabhadra (or
in some versions, Virabhadra and the
fierce goddess Bhadrakali), and dispatches them to destroy Daksha’s sacrifice. They gleefully carry out his command, scattering the guests and killing
Daksha. The resulting carnage ends only
when the assembled gods praise Shiva
as the supreme deity. Daksha is eventually restored to life with the head of a
goat, and he too repents his arrogance
and worships Shiva. At Daksha’s request,
Shiva agrees to remain at the sacrificial
site forever and sanctify it. Shiva takes
the form of a linga, the pillar-shaped
object that is his symbolic form, and can
still be seen at the Daksha Mahadev
temple in the town of Kankhal.
Although Shiva’s anger has been
pacified by this worship, he is disconsolate at Sati’s death and wanders the
earth carrying her body on his shoulders. In his grief, Shiva neglects his
divine functions, and the world begins
to fall into ruin. The gods, concerned
over the world’s imminent destruction,
go to the god Vishnu for help. Vishnu
then follows behind Shiva and uses his
razor-sharp discus to gradually cut away
pieces of Sati’s body, until finally there is
nothing left. When the body is completely gone, Shiva leaves for the mountains, where he remains absorbed in
meditation until it is broken by Kama.
Sati is reborn as the goddess Parvati and
later remarries Shiva.
The myth connected with the figure
of Sati is important for several reasons.
First, it provides the charter myth for the
Shakti Pithas (“bench of the Goddess”),
a network of sites sacred to the Goddess
that spreads throughout the subcontinent. Each of these Shakti Pithas—
in some lists there are fifty-one, and in
others 108—marks the site where a part
of Sati’s body fell to earth, taking form
there as a different goddess. These
differing goddesses, spread all over the
subcontinent, are thus seen as manifestations of this one primordial goddess,
united by the symbolism of the human
body. Aside from establishing this network,
the myth has several other important
messages: It graphically illustrates the
supremacy of devotion (in this case, to
Shiva) over the older sacrificial cult; it
illustrates some of the tensions in the
joint family, in which women feel the
conflict of loyalty between their natal
and their marital homes; and it is the
charter myth for the Daksha Mahadev
temple in the town of Kankhal, just
south of the sacred city of Haridwar,
where Daksha’s sacrifice is claimed to
have taken place. See also pitha.