Rani Sati, also identified as Narayani Devi and referred to as Dadiji (grandmother), is said to be a Rajasthani woman who lived sometime between the 13th and the 17th century and committed sati (self-immolation) on her husband's death. Various temples in Rajasthan and elsewhere are devoted to her worship and to commemorate her act.
The accounts of Rani Sati's life and the events leading to her death vary widely. Her death has been dated to 1295 or 1595 in some re-tellings,[1] while others place her in the 14th century,[2] or even the 17th century.[3] One such legend, recounted by Sakuntala Narsimhan, says:[4]
[Rani] was a seventeen-year-old girl of the Bania caste. The legend is that the nawab coveted the white mare that her betrothed rode on, and in the confrontation that ensued, [Rani's husband] Tandhan Das was killed, leaving his faithful servant as the only survivor apart from Dadi Narayani Devi, and her mare. When the servant asked her whether he should take her back to her father's or to her father-in-law's, she is said to have replied that she would become a sati and wherever the horse stopped while carrying the ashes of the couple, a temple to their memory should be raised.
..., on one day about six hundred years ago a fourteen-year-old Hindu bride named Narayani Devi was coming home for the first time with her husband (of the Jalan lineage) just after their marriage. Her husband worked as a merchant in Jhunjhunu. Muslim invaders suddenly attacked her husband and his companions, brutally killing them. Only Narayani Devi and (in some versions) a loyal servant named "Rana" survived the attack. According to the story, Narayani Devi then bravely burned herself to death by spontaneously bursting into flames to avoid being captured and kidnapped by these invaders.
Other accounts ascribe the killing of her husband to a band of dacoits, and say that Rani died by the same hand in trying to defend her honour.[2] Yet other versions regard Rani as the first of thirteen widows in her Jalan family to commit sati.[1]
Several temples in India, especially in the North Western state of Rajasthan, are devoted to Rani Sati and her act of sati. There are numerous other Sati temples in the region including Narayani Sati in Alwar, Dholan Sati in Raipur and Rani Bhatiyani in Jasol. Sati worship had been common in these regions, Banarasidas in his Ardhakathanaka (1643), mentions his family visiting the sati shrine associated with his clan. Though veneration of Rani Sati and patronage of these temples cut across caste, regional and even religious lines,[5] they are particularly prevalent amongst the merchant Marwari community, and its Agrawal sub-caste.[3] Members of those communities have funded the construction of Rani Sati temples, and transformed her status from a kuldevi (family deity) to a Goddess subject to public worship.[6]