Suttee
a form of widow sacrifice (itself a form of funeral sacrifice), formerly common in Brahmanic India, in which the widow was burnt with her dead husband on the funeral pyre. Many went willingly and gaily to their doom, but others were driven by fear of disgrace, by family influence, by priestly threats, and, in not a few cases, by sheer violence. Suttee was abolished by law in British India Dec. 4, 1829, but it was carried out in some principalities for many years afterward.