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 dis courage her by pointing out that
one should not go without an invitation, final ly gives her his permission.
When Sati arrives at the sacrificial grounds and asks Daksha
why he has excluded her hus band, 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 dis patches them to destroy Daksha’s sacri fice.
They gleefully carry out his com mand, scattering the guests
and killing Daksha.
The resulting carnage ends only when the assembled gods
praise Shiva as the supreme deity.
Daksha is eventu ally restored to life with the head of a
goat, and he too repents his arrogance and worships Shiva.
At Daksha’s plea, Shiva offers to stay at the sacrifice
place forever and sanctify it.
Shiva assumes the form of a linga, the pillar-shaped item
that is his symbolic form, and may still be seen in the Daksha Mahadev temple
in the village of Kankhal.
Despite the fact that this adoration has calmed Shiva's
rage, he arrives late at Sati's death and walks the land with her corpse on his
shoulders.
Shiva neglects his divine tasks in his sorrow, and the
universe starts to break apart.
Concerned about the world's impending annihilation, the gods
seek assistance from Vishnu.
Following following Shiva, Vishnu uses his razor-sharp
discus to gently sever portions of Sati's corpse until there is nothing left.
Shiva departs for the mountains after the body is completely
gone, where he stays engrossed in meditation until it is shattered by Kama.
Sati reincarnates as the goddess Parvati and marries Shiva
again.
The legend around Sati is significant for a number of
reasons.
For starters, it serves as the founding story for the Shakti
Pithas ("Goddess's Bench"), a network of Goddess-sanctuary locations
that stretches throughout the subcontinent.
Each of these Shakti Pithas—there are 51 in some lists, 108
in others—marks the location where a piece of Sati's body fell to earth and
took on the shape of a separate goddess.
These many goddesses, scattered over the subcontinent, are
therefore considered as manifestations of the same primal goddess, linked by
the human body's symbolism.
The myth contains three key lessons in addition to forming
this network: 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 a conflict of loyalty between
their natal and marital homes; and it is the founding myth for the Daksha
Mahadev temple in Kankhal, just south of the sacred city of Haridwar, where
Daksha's sacrifice is said to have occurred.
